Elizabeth Barrett was already an established poet in 1844 when a volume of her work Poems was published. Robert Browning, who was still a promising but struggling poet at the time, wrote to her expressing admiration for her work. They met in May 1845 and, following a passionate but (due to objections from her father) secret courtship, eloped to Italy in September 1846. The couple exchanged nearly six hundred letters during the courtship, but the sonnets were a private record Elizabeth kept of her feelings and the progress of their relationship. When she finally shared them with Robert three years after their marriage, he declared the sonnets the best since Shakespeare's and encouraged her to publish them.