September 12

In literary history

• 1846Elizabeth Barrett slipped out of Wimpole Street and married Robert Browning at St Marylebone Parish Church, telling no one. Her father disinherited her, as he did every child of his who married. She had been writing Robert sonnets all through the courtship and showed him none until 1849.
• 1977Robert Lowell died of a heart attack in a taxi crossing Manhattan, on his way from the airport to the apartment of Elizabeth Hardwick, the wife he had left. In his arms was a brown paper parcel holding Lucian Freud's portrait of the wife he was leaving.