Robert Browning

Robert Browning

(1812-1889)

Robert Browning was born on May 7, 1812, in Camberwell, England. His mother was an accomplished pianist and a devout evangelical Christian. His father, who worked as a bank clerk, was also an artist, scholar, antiquarian, and collector of books and pictures. His rare book collection of more than 6,000 volumes included works in Greek, Hebrew, Latin, French, Italian, and Spanish. Much of Browning's education came from his well-read father. It is believed that he was already proficient at reading and writing by the age of five. A bright and anxious student, Browning learned Latin, Greek, and French by the time he was fourteen. From fourteen to sixteen he was educated at home, attended to by various tutors in music, drawing, dancing, and horsemanship. At the age of twelve he wrote a volume of Byronic verse entitled Incondita, which his parents attempted, unsuccessfully, to have published. In 1825, a cousin gave Browning a copy of Shelley's Miscellaneous Poems (1826); Browning was so taken with the book that he asked for the rest of Shelley's works for his thirteenth birthday, and declared himself a vegetarian and an atheist in emulation of the poet. Despite this early passion, he apparently wrote no poems between the ages of thirteen and twenty. In 1828, Browning enrolled at the University of London, but he soon left, anxious to read and learn at his own pace. The random nature of his education later surfaced in his writing, leading to criticism of his poems' obscurities.

In 1833, Browning anonymously published his first major published work, Pauline, and in 1840 he published Sordello, which was widely regarded as a failure. He also tried his hand at drama, but his plays, including Strafford, which ran for five nights in 1837, and the Bells and Pomegranates series, were for the most part unsuccessful. Nevertheless, the techniques he developed through his dramatic monologues--especially his use of diction, rhythm, and symbol--are regarded as his most important contribution to poetry, influencing such major poets of the twentieth century as Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and Robert Frost.

After reading Elizabeth Barrett's Poems (1844) and corresponding with her for a few months, Browning met her in 1845. They were married in 1846, against the wishes of Barrett's father. The couple moved to Pisa and then Florence, where they continued to write. They had a son, Robert "Pen" Browning, in 1849, the same year his Collected Poems was published. Elizabeth inspired Robert's collection of poems Men and Women (1855), which he dedicated to her. Now regarded as one of Browning's best works, the book was received with little notice at the time; its author was then primarily known as Elizabeth Barrett's husband.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning died in 1861, and Robert and Pen Browning soon moved to London. Browning went on to publish Dramatis Personae (1863), and The Ring and the Book (1868). The latter, based on a seventeenth-century Italian murder trial, received wide critical acclaim, finally earning a twilight of renown and respect in Browning's career. The Browning Society was founded while he still lived, in 1881, and he was awarded honorary degrees by Oxford University in 1882 and the University of Edinburgh in 1884. Robert Browning died on the same day that his final volume of verse, Asolando, was published, in 1889.

A Selected Bibliography

Poetry and Drama

Pauline: A Fragment of a Confession, anonymous, 1833
Paracelsus, 1835
Strafford: An Historical Tragedy, 1837
Sordell, 1840
Bells and Pomegranates. No. I - Pippa Passes, 1841
Bells and Pomegranates. No. II - King Victor and King Charles, 1842
Bells and Pomegranates. No. III - Dramatic Lyrics, 1842
Bells and Pomegranates, No. IV - The Return of the Druses: A Tragedy in Five Acts, 1943
Bells and Pomegranates. No. V - A Blot in the 'Scutcheon: A Tragedy in Five Acts, 1843 edited
Bells and Pomegranates. No. V - Colombe's Birthday: A Play in Five Acts, 1844
Bells and Pomegranates. No. VII - Dramatic Romances & Lyrics, 1845
Bells and Pomegranates. No. VIII - and Last, Luria; and A Soul's Tragedy, 1846
Poems: A New Edition, 2 volumes, 1849
Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day, 1850
Two Poems by Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1854
Men and Women, 2 volumes, 1855; 1 volume, 1856
Dramatis Personae, 1864
The Poetical Works of Robert Browning, 6 volumes, 1868
The Ring and the Book, 2 volumes, 1868-1869
Balaustion's Adventure, Including a Transcript from Euripides, 1871
Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Saviour of Society, 1871
Fifine at the Fair, 1872
Red Cotton Night-Cap Country; or, Turf and Towers, 1873
Aristophanes' Apology, Including a Transcript from Euripides: Being the Last Adventures of Balaustion, 1875
The Inn Album, 1875
Pacchiarotto and How He Worked in Distemper, with Other Poems, 1876
La Saisiaz, and The Two Poets of Croisic, 1878
Dramatic Idyls, 1879
Dramatic Idyls: Second Series, 1880
Jocoseria, 1883
Ferishtah's Fancies, 1884
Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in Their Day, 1887
Asolando: Fancies and Facts, 1889
Complete Poetic and Dramatic Works of Robert Browning, Cambridge Edition, eds. G. W. Cooke and H. E. Scudder, 1895
The Complete Works of Robert Browning, Florentine Edition, eds. Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke, 12 volumes, 1898
The Works of Robert Browning, Centenary Edition, ed. Frederic G. Kenyon, 10 volumes, 1912
New Poems by Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, ed. Frederic G. Kenyon, 1914
Robert Browning: The Ring and the Book, ed. Richard D. Altick, 1971
Robert Browning: The Poems, ed. John Pettigrew, supplemented and completed by Thomas J. Collins, 2 volumes, 1981

Prose

The Agamemnon of Aeschylus, tr. Browning, 1877
Thomas Jones, The Divine Order: Sermons, intr. Browning, 1884

Letters

Letters of Robert Browning Collected by Thomas J. Wise, ed. Thurman L. Hood, 1933
Robert Browning and Julia Wedgwood: A Broken Friendship as Revealed in Their Letters, ed. Richard Curle, 1937
New Letters of Robert Browning, eds. William Clyde DeVane and Kenneth Leslie Knickerbocker, 1950
Dearest Isa: Browning's Letters to Isa Blagden, ed. Edward C. McAleer, 1951
Browning to His American Friends: Letters between the Brownings, the Storys, and James Russell Lowell, 1841-1890, ed. Gertrude Reese Hudson, 1965
Learned Lady: Letters from Robert Browning to Mrs. Thomas FitzGerald 1876-1889, ed. Edward C. McAleer, 1966
The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, 1845-1846, ed. Evan Kintner, 2 volumes, 1969
The Brownings to the Tennysons, ed. Thomas J. Collins, 1971

Robert Browning exhibits elsewhere on the web: