Elizabeth Barrett of Torquay

<p>Owing to ill health after an accident her doctor prescribed a move away from London to the cleaner air of Devon. Elizabeth had many relatives already living in Torquay. This book owes much to her correspondence with the amazing Mary Mitford a remarkable person and a professional writer. </p><p>This is a book that looks at her life under a microscope for the few precious years she was staying in Torquay. It is also a social history of Torquay in the Victorian times. It gives you a domestic insight into her everyday life by describing what she could see around her who her friends were what she said and did.<br><br>Her life in Torquay was to change everything. There were fun times: carol singing till the early hours with Florence Nightingale and family; going to parties; bracing carriage rides up and down the sea front. Sadly her 'bro' (as she called him) Edward drowned in a yachting accident with several of his friends.</p><p><br>Elizabeth Barrett was a poet whose work could be so romantic yet her poem 'The Cry of the Children' had the same effect that Charles Dickens achieved with `A Christmas Carol' it being both brutal and shocking `social comment that has never been bettered.'</p>