Truly some of the most romantic and personal feelings ever put to pen and ink. Elizabeth Barrett Browning was one of the most respected English poets in the Victorian period. Elizabeth was one of 12 children born into a wealthy family. The family wealth came from a Jamaican sugar plantation. Elizabeth contracted a long disease in her teens and after that her family considered her an invalid. Sonnets from the Portuguese consists of 44 love poems written around 1945. She wrote most of these poems just before she married Robert Browning. Elizabeth felt the poems were too personal to publish until her husband suggested the name. My Little Portuguese was a nickname Robert had given Elizabeth because of her dark hair.