BROWNING (ROBERT AND ELIZABETH BARRETT, poets) CHARMING PERSONAL ITEMS BELONGING TO EACH OF THEM, a hair pin and combbined paper knife and book marker, from the sale of their effects at Sotheby's in May 1913, lot 1406: (i) Hair pin 'with coral hand charm against the Evil Eye', c.5 inches long, number H574 in The Browning Collections, 1984; (ii) Paper knife and book marker combined 'with claw and ball handle, belonged to RB', 4 inches long, original sale label attached 'Robert Browning's Paper-Knife and Book-mark' with the lot number on the verso, number H627 in The Browning Collections, 1984;

The hair pin and combined paper knife and book marker are displayed together on a typed letter signed twice by Maggs Bros. on headed notepaper and dated 17 July 1913, certifying their purchase of the two items at the sale of the Brownings' effects at Sotheby's on 8 May 1913, 1 page, quarto, 109 Strand, London Elizabeth Barrett Browning was deeply superstitious, fascinated by the supernatural and spiritualism and obsessed by having an 'evil' or 'fatal star...the star Wormwood' -- 'everything turns to evil which I touch.' She would account herself responsible if an accident occurred to anyone doing something she wished and said to Robert Browning 'if you knew how dreadfully natural every sort of evil seems to my mind, you would not laugh at me for being afraid.' She once cried out to him 'May God turn back the evil of me!' (Betty Miller, Robert Browning, 1972; Margaret Forster, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1988)

£2,850