Owing to ill health after an accident her doctor prescribed a move away from London to the cleaner air of Devon. Elizabeth had many relatives already living in Torquay. This book owes much to her correspondence with the amazing Mary Mitford, a remarkable person and a professional writer.
This is a book that looks at her life under a microscope for the few precious years she was staying in Torquay. It is also a social history of Torquay in the Victorian times. It gives you a domestic insight into her everyday life by describing what she could see around her, who her friends were, what she said and did.
Her life in Torquay was to change everything. There were fun times: carol singing till the early hours with Florence Nightingale and family; going to parties; bracing carriage rides up and down the sea front. Sadly her 'bro' (as she called him) Edward drowned in a yachting accident with several of his friends.
Elizabeth Barrett was a poet whose work could be so romantic yet her poem 'The Cry of the Children' had the same effect that Charles Dickens achieved with 'A Christmas Carol', it being both brutal and shocking, 'social comment that has never been bettered.'