Elizabeth Barrett Browning originally published "Hiram Powers' Greek Slave" (perhaps misspelled as "Hiram Power's Greek Slave") in the second volume of Charles Dickens's Household Words. The poem considers The Greek Slave, a statue sculpted by American artist Hiram Powers, with whom she and Robert Browning were acquainted and near-neighbors in Florence. Because the statue was, at the time of the poem's inception, being displayed across the U.S. and Britain, it is likely that EBB saw the statue (or a model cast) for herself at Powers's studio prior to its journey. "Hiram Powers' Greek Slave" is the fourth of the five poems EBB wrote about slavery and is primarily responsible for shifting the statue's popular context away from that of the Greek War of Independence that had initially inspired Powers' work and towards broader questions of morality surrounding slavery abroad in the United States.

On June 29, 1861, at the age of 55, Elizabeth Barrett Browning passes away of an undiagnosed illness at Casa Guidi, the home in Italy that she shared with her husband Robert Browning. As a child, EBB had been weakened by a series of ailments—viral infections, measles, and various other pains and fevers—and, though the Italian climate had proven largely beneficial for her poor health, she never fully recovered and remained sickly throughout adulthood.