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Browning Elizabeth Barrett Quizzes, Trivia and Puzzles
Browning Elizabeth Barrett Quizzes, Trivia

Elizabeth Barrett Browning Trivia

Elizabeth Barrett Browning Trivia Quizzes

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Readers familiar with her love poems will not be surprised to know that Elizabeth Barrett eloped with Robert Browning because her father forbade the relationship (and disinherited her for it), and the couple subsequently lived in Italy. She poured her emotions into other subjects, as well.
2 quizzes and 25 trivia questions.
1.
  The Poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning   great trivia quiz  
Multiple Choice
 15 Qns
This quiz surveys the most well known works of the English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Average, 15 Qns, skylarb, Jul 04 20
Average
skylarb
Jul 04 20
242 plays
2.
  Sonnets from the Portuguese    
Multiple Choice
 10 Qns
'Sonnets from the Portuguese' is a collection of poems which chronicle the real love story of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning. Written in Victorian times, they are still read and quoted today. This quiz covers the sonnets and the story behind them
Average, 10 Qns, luckycharm60, Jul 04 20
Average
luckycharm60 gold member
Jul 04 20
406 plays
Related Topics
  Literature Before 1900 [Literature] (50 quizzes)

  Poetry [Literature] (166 quizzes)


Elizabeth Barrett Browning Trivia Questions

1. What collection of 44 love sonnets by Elizabeth Barrett Browning was initially published in the guise of a translation?

From Quiz
The Poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Answer: Sonnets from the Portuguese

Elizabeth was reluctant to publish these rather personal poems, and so she considered publishing them under the title "Sonnets translated from the Bosnian" so they might appear to be translations. Her husband Robert, however, suggested she instead use the title "Sonnets from the Portuguese". Elizabeth was, after all, an admirer of the Portuguese poet Luís Vaz de Camões, and Robert himself often referred to her by the nickname of "my little Portuguese." The collection was published in 1850 and was quite popular in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's own lifetime.

2. How many poems make up the collection 'Sonnets from the Portuguese'?

From Quiz Sonnets from the Portuguese

Answer: 44

The 44 poems were written circa 1845-46, in the period leading up to the marriage of Elizabeth Barrett to Robert Browning. It is believed that Elizabeth did not share the sonnets with Robert until three years after their marriage.

3. "And, if God choose, / I shall but love thee better after" what?

From Quiz The Poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Answer: death

These are the closing lines to sonnet number 43 from "Sonnets from the Portuguese". The poem reads: "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of Being and Ideal Grace. I love thee to the level of everyday's Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight. I love thee freely, as men strive for Right; I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise; I love thee with the passion put to use In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith; I love thee with a love I seemed to lose With my lost saints,-I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life!-and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death." "How do I love thee?" remains one of Browning's most popular sonnets to this day, and the poem is frequently anthologized.

4. When was the volume first published?

From Quiz Sonnets from the Portuguese

Answer: 1850

Elizabeth was, at first, reluctant to publish the sonnets, due to their personal nature, and it was Robert who insisted that the poetry should be shared, stating them to be the finest written since Shakespeare's time.

5. What dramatic narrative poem, written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning when she was just 14, tells the story of the time when the Athenian state defeated a large invading force?

From Quiz The Poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Answer: The Battle of Marathon

"The Battle of Maldon" is an old English poem celebrating a 991 battle in which the Anglo-Saxon army was unable to repulse a Viking raid. "The Charge of the Light Brigade" is by Lord Tennyson and recounts the Battle of Balaclava. The Battle of Marathon occurred during the first Persian invasion of Greece under King Darius I, in 490 BC. The Greek army defeated a much larger Persian force. The poem was written in heroic couplets.

6. The Sonnets were written during 1845 and 1846 and the manuscript, together with all but one of 574 letters the Brownings wrote to each other still survive. They married in 1846 and left England to live where?

From Quiz Sonnets from the Portuguese

Answer: Italy

Elizabeth's father was strongly against any marriage for her, and so the couple married secretly on 12th September 1846 and moved to Italy.

7. Elizabeth Barrett Browning translated what play about a Greek, mythological fire-bringer?

From Quiz The Poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Answer: Prometheus Bound

The Ancient Greek tragedy "Prometheus Bound" is typically attributed to Aeschylus and is based on the myth of the Titan Prometheus, who defied the gods to bring fire down to mankind, for which he was punished. In 1833, Browning published "Prometheus Bound, Translated from the Greek of Aeschylus, and Miscellaneous Poems".

8. The most recognisable poem in the collection, "Sonnet number 43", starts with a line familiar to most people, 'How do I love thee'. How does this first line finish?

From Quiz Sonnets from the Portuguese

Answer: Let me count the ways.

"How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of Being and ideal Grace."

9. What do Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poems "A Curse for a Nation" and "The Runaway..." condemn?

From Quiz The Poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Answer: Slavery

Browning was opposed to slavery and rejoiced in the 1833 Emancipation Act that abolished it in Britain. She wrote two poems about slavery, including "A Curse for a Nation" and "The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point". In the former poem, the poet hears an angel speak who tells her to take up her pen and write "a Nation's curse for me." The poet relents and writes the curse: "Because yourselves are standing straight In the state Of Freedom's foremost acolyte, Yet keep calm footing all the time On writhing bond-slaves, -- for this crime This is the curse. Write..."

10. Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "The Cry of the Children" was a protest against what?

From Quiz The Poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Answer: Child Labor

The poem was first published in "Blackwood's Magazine" in 1843 and was a protest against the exploitation of children for manual labor. It comes in a long line of literary protests against such exploitations, such as William Blake's "The Chimney Sweeper" in 1794. Outcries of this kind eventually led to the reform of child labor laws. In 1847, work hours for children were limited to ten a day, and in 1901, the minimum age for labor was raised to 12. The poem rails against the use of children in the mines and factories: "Go out, children, from the mine and from the city - Sing out, children, as the little thrushes do - Pluck you handfuls of the meadow-cowslips pretty Laugh aloud, to feel your fingers let them through!" The poem starkly describes the children's suffering in the factories: "Let them feel that this cold metallic motion Is not all the life God fashions or reveals - Let them prove their inward souls against the notion That they live in you, or under you, O wheels! - Still, all day, the iron wheels go onward, As if Fate in each were stark; And the children's souls, which God is calling sunward, Spin on blindly in the dark."

11. 'Sonnet 33' begins "Yes, call me by my pet name!" What was the pet name that Elizabeth's family had used for her?

From Quiz Sonnets from the Portuguese

Answer: Ba

Elizabeth's family called her Ba, and this Sonnet describes how Robert came to also call her by that name. Bro was the pet name for her brother, Edward.

12. "'How long,' they say, 'how long, O cruel nation, / Will you stand, to move the world, on a child's ____ / Stifle down with a mailed heel its palpitation, / And tread onward to your throne amid the mart?'" What word is missing from these lines?

From Quiz The Poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Answer: heart

In these lines from "The Cry of the Children," Browning criticizes England's exploitation of children to produce more goods and grow richer: "Our blood splashes upward, O our tyrants, And your purple shews your path; But the child's sob curseth deeper in the silence Than the strong man in his wrath!" The poem was inspired by a report from The Royal Commission of Inquiry into Children's Employment, which came out in 1842, which also inspired other literary reactions from writers such as Elizabeth Gaskell and Charles Dickens.

13. 'Sonnet 38' is dedicated to the first time Robert kissed Elizabeth. Which part of Elizabeth was kissed?

From Quiz Sonnets from the Portuguese

Answer: Her hand

"First time he kissed me, he but only kissed The fingers of this hand wherewith I write;"

14. Which poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, published in 1839, was set to music by Sir Edward Elgar? It begins, "The ship went on with solemn face / To meet the darkness on the deep."

From Quiz The Poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Answer: Sabbath Morning at Sea

The poem was set to music in 1899 as part of Elgar's song-cycle "Sea Pictures". Browning's was the third song in the cycle. The poem beings: "The ship went on with solemn face: To meet the darkness on the deep. The solemn ship went onward. I bowed down weary in the place; For parting tears and present sleep Had weighed mine eyelids downward." "Sebastian, or, Virtue Rewarded" was written when Elizabeth was just nine years old and was never published.

15. The last sonnet, 'Number 44', was written two days before Elizabeth and Robert's secret marriage. How does this Sonnet begin?

From Quiz Sonnets from the Portuguese

Answer: Beloved, thou hast brought me many flowers

...and it ends with "Instruct thine eyes to keep their colours true, And tell thy soul, their roots are left in mine." I hope you enjoyed the quiz, and a little glimpse into the romantic world of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning.

16. "My letters!" begins Browning's Sonnet 28, "all dead paper, ____ and white!" What word is missing from this opening line?

From Quiz The Poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Answer: mute

In this poem from "Sonnets from the Portuguese", the speaker picks up a stack of love letters and ruminates, "My letters! all dead paper, mute and white!" Despite being inanimate objects, those letters "seem alive and quivering," because the speaker's own "tremulous hands" are shaking as she loosens the string around the bundle and lets them drop down on her knee. She then re-reads the letters with great depth of feeling: "This said, - he wished to have me in his sight Once, as a friend: this fixed a day in spring To come and touch my hand ... a simple thing, Yet I wept for it! - this, ... the paper's light ... Said, Dear, I love thee; and I sank and quailed As if God's future thundered on my past. This said, I am thine - and so its ink has paled With lying at my heart that beat too fast."

17. "What was he doing, the great god ___, / Down in the reeds by the river?" What god is Elizabeth Barret Browning talking about in "A Musical Instrument"?

From Quiz The Poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Answer: Pan

In Greek mythology, Pan, often referred to in literature as "the great god Pan," is the god of shepherds and wilds, and he is often associated with rustic music, such as the pan flute, fashioned from hollow reeds. He has the horns, legs, and hindquarters of a goat and the top half of a man. Browning's poem describes Pan fashioning the reed into a musical instrument: "High on the shore sat the great god Pan While turbidly flowed the river; And hacked and hewed as a great god can, With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed, Till there was not a sign of the leaf indeed To prove it fresh from the river."

18. "If thou must love me, let it be for nought" except for what?

From Quiz The Poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Answer: Love's sake only

This is the opening line of Sonnet 14 from the "Sonnets to the Portuguese:" "If thou must love me, let it be for nought Except for love's sake only." The poet does not want her lover to love her for any physical feature or mannerism: "Do not say, 'I love her for her smile - her look - her way Of speaking gently, - for a trick of thought That falls in well with mine, and certes brought A sense of pleasant ease on such a day.' For these things in themselves, Belovèd, may Be changed, or change for thee - and love, so wrought, May be unwrought so. Neither love me for Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry: A creature might forget to weep, who bore Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby! But love me for love's sake, that evermore Thou mayst love on, through love's eternity."

19. What French novelist did Browning call "thou large-brained woman and large-hearted man"?

From Quiz The Poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Answer: George Sand

George Sand was the pen name of Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, who wrote such works as "Valentine" (1832), "Pauline" (1839), and "Little Fadette: A Domestic Story" (1849). Browning's poem about her is titled "To George Sand: A Desire" and begins, "Thou large-brained woman and large-hearted man, Self-called George Sand! whose soul, amid the lions Of thy tumultuous senses, moans defiance And answers roar for roar, as spirits can..." Browning wrote another poem to George Sand titled "To George Sand: A Recognition" which begins: "True genius, but true woman! Dost deny Thy woman's nature with a manly scorn And break away the gauds and armlets worn By weaker women in captivity?" Currer Bell was the male pen name of novelist Charlotte Bronte while George Elliot was the pen name of Mary Ann Evans.

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