This page has been validated.
INTRODUCTORY.
vii
biographical statements about her; Richard H. Horne, who published two volumes of Mrs. Browning's correspondence, muddles the dates almost beyond elucidation; whilst Mrs. Richmond Ritchie, who has contributed to the Dictionary of National Biography the most copious and authoritative memoir of Mrs. Browning extant, has, so far as biographical data are concerned, made "confusion worse confounded."
With examples so misleading, and material so restricted, neither accuracy nor substance sufficient for a volume might have been hoped for; but some past success in the paths of biography has encouraged me to place before the public what, with all its shortcomings, is the initial biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
JOHN H. INGRAM.
