Massive Collection of the Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning Now Available Online

A collaboration between Wellesley College in Massachusetts and Baylor University in Waco, Texas, has produced an online archive of 573 letters written by poets Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning and sent to each other during their courtship. The handwritten letters have been digitized and can be viewed in their original format.

Former Wellesley College president Caroline Hazard purchased the letters in 1929 and donated them to the Wellesley College Library. They have remained there ever since and were available only to scholars who traveled to the Wellesley campus. The letters are at least 165 years old, written between January 1845 and September 1846.

Wellesley partnered with Baylor University which maintains more than 30 digitized archives. And Baylor is the home of the Armstrong Browning Library which houses more than 2,800 letters written by other people to the Brownings or by the Brownings to other people. Baylor scanned 842 of its own letters and made them available as part of the new archive. Additional letters will be added in the future.

The collection is accessible here.