Elizabeth Barrett Browning passed a happy childhood on her father's country estate until the age of 15 when she fell and injured her spine while saddling her pony. From that day on she suffered bad health and in her nervous condition the thought of early death was often in her mind, as in the last sonnet of Morawetz's composition: "the dreadful outer brink of obvious death".

Her father was extraordinarily despotic and any suggestion of the possibility of her marriage, or that of her brothers and sisters, seems to have driven him to great fury.

The famous English poet, Robert Browning, knew Elizabeth Barrett only from her published works. He wrote in his first letter to her: "I love your verses with all my heart." After much hesitation on her part they met for the first time in January 1845; but frightened by her father's reaction, she wrote to Browning that they must never meet again. Nevertheless, upon his insistence they continued to meet secretly only once a week and to correspond almost every day, Browning urging her to marry him and come to Italy with him.

Finally, Elizabeth Barrett consented in September, rather hesitantly, saying in her letter: "You have touched me more profoundly than I thought, but there is time for consideration." During that time she must have been writing her Sonnets, but she did not mention them in her letters.

Eventually, they decided on a secret elopement as the only possibility of marriage. They were married on September 12, 1846, and she never saw her father again. He never forgave her marriage and sent all subsequent letters back to her unopened.

There is, of course, no Portuguese origin in these sonnets. Browning called Elizabeth "his little Portuguese," and purposely gave them this misleading title when these highly personal poems were published in 1850. He described them as "the finest sonnets since Shakespeare".