Key Locations: EBB and the Landmarks of Slavery
This map includes paratextual information about significant places that help to illuminate and contextualize Elizabeth Barrett Browning's anti-slavery poetry. Charting these locations situates EBB's work within the larger, globalized framework of her own family history, drawing direct connections to their centuries-long standing as wealthy plantation owners in the West Indies.
Key Events: EBB and the Road to Abolition
This timeline tracks key events in the life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, her anti-slavery poetry, and the fight for abolition across the British Empire and the United States. In doing so, it contextualizes EBB and her work within the scope of nineteenth-century sociopolitics and culture, charting historical moments of overlap and divergence between the two.
Helstone aka New Forest
Margaret Hale in North and South grew up in Helstone, aka New Forest in Southern Hampshire, south of London. New Forest is indeed a magical spot likened to a setting in a Tennyson poem, perhaps English Idylls (1842) with poems including "Audley Court" and "The Gardener's Daughter." Known for its rare birds and ponies, it is now the site of a National Park. (CG)
Cadiz, Spain
Here is where Frederick Hale takes refuge.
Cadiz, Spain
To avoid court martial in England in Gaskell's North and South (1855), naval officer Frederick Hale takes refuge in Cadiz. He was part in a mutiny against a cruel British naval officer before the novel opens. After staying briefly in South America, he moves to Cadiz, Spain and takes a job with a Mr. Barbour, a British merchant, and he falls in love with his Anglo-Spanish daughter, Dolores. Margaret writes to Frederick without Rev. Hale's knowledge to tell her brother their mother is dying; Frederick returns with great peril to his life.