Robert Browning, May 1865

Mrs. Julia Margaret Cameron (1815 - 1879)

RA Collection: Art

Photogravure printed by H.H.H. Cameron and his partner J.C. Smith from negatives by Julia Margaret Cameron for the publication Alfred, Lord Tennyson And His Friends.

Tennyson first met Browning in 1841 at a breakfast given by Richard Monckton Milnes. In April 1846, they met again when Browning described him as 'a LONG, lazy kind of man, at least just after dinner...yet there is something "naif" about him, too... the genius you see, too.'

They became closer friends after another meeting in Paris in 1851, particularly so in the case of Emily Tennyson and Elizabeth Browning. Each had married late, had lost a child and both suffered ill-health. Thereafter they were to correspond regularly.