Though American sculptor and artisti Hiram Powers created The Greek Slave as a representation of Turkish atrocities committed during the Greek War of Independence (1821-1829) from the Ottoman Empire, it quickly came to represent commentary on slavery in the United States. In the late 1840s and later in the 1850s, the statue was shown in various U.S. cities to mixed reactions, largely resulting from his depiction of the woman's nude form. In 1845 and 1848, The Greek Slave made appearances in London and was featured in the U.S. exhibit at the Great Exhibition of 1851.

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.