Eighteen-hundred sixty-one marked the first year of the American Civil War. The conflagration was officially declared on April 12th of that year. Incidentally, and perhaps coincidentally, it was also the year that Tsar Alexander II of Russia freed the serfs, with his Emancipation Reform of 1861. It was the beginning of a decade that would precipitate great change the world over, politically, historically, and in literature. It was the year that would see both the publication of one of Charles Dickens’ true masterworks, Great Expectations, and which saw the death of Elizabeth Barrett Browning in the arms of her husband, Robert.