The Digitized Romance of Barrett and Browning
The 573 love letters of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning record the progression of their romance starting from the first letter sent by Browning in admiration of Barrett’s poetry. The collected letters have been housed at Wellesley College since 1930. On Tuesday, Valentine’s Day, the college made the letters available online, scanned and indexed for searching. Even the envelopes are in there. The letters were digitized in collaboration with Baylor University, home of another significant Browning collection. Along with the letters, Wellesley has the box and case used by Browning and Barrett to store the letters they exchanged and the door from the Barrett house with the mail slot through which Browning’s letters were delivered. According to college lore, the slot was screwed shut years ago to prevent Wellesley students from slipping in their own hopeful letters.