Robert Browning

The thoughtful, beautiful,searing, demanding - and,finally, intensely romantic poems of one of the greatest of English poets

Selected Poems By Robert Browning Contents My StarIncident of the French CampHome Thoughts from AbroadRabbi Ben EzraMemorabiliaAbt VoglerThe Lost LeaderThe Boy and the AngelAndrea del Sarto"Good News from Ghent"By the FiresideMy Last Duchess Introduction Robert Browning was born at Camberwell, a suburb of London, May 7, 1812. From his earliest years he was fond of writing verses, and when twelve years of age had produced poems enough to form a volume. His first published poem, "Pauline," appeared in 18333, but his real introduction to the public was through "Paracelsus," a drama, published in 1835. In 1837 the tragedy of "Strafford" was unsuccessfully presented at Drury Lane Theater. In 1840 the epic "Sordello" was published, one of his most characteristic and most difficult works. In 1841-1846 appeared the series of "Bells and Pomegranates," in eight shilling parts, containing much of his finest poetry, including the tragedy "A Blot in the 'Scutcheon" and the graceful dramatic poem "Pippa Passes." In 1846 he was married to the distinguished poetess, Elizabeth Barrett, and soon after established his home in Italy. "Christmas Eve and Easter Day" appeared in 1850, followed by two volumes of short poems, "Men and Women," 1855, and "Dramatis Personae," 1864. His greatest work, "The Ring and teh Book," appeared in 1868-9, closely followed by many other important poems, chief of which are "Fifine at the Fair," 1872; "Red Cotton Night-cap country," 1873; "Aristophanes' Apology" and "The Inn Album," 1875. Most important of his latest works are "Dramatic Idyls," 1879-80; "Jocoseria," 1883; "Ferishtah's Fancies," 1885; and "Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in their Day," 1887. The first and perhaps the final impression we receive from the works of Robert Browning is that of a great nature, an immense personality. The poet in him is made up of many men. He is dramatist, humorist, lyrist, painter, musician, philosopher, and scholar, each in full measure, and he includes and dominates them all. In richness of nature, in scope and penetration of mind and vision, in all the potentialities of poetry, he is probably second among English poets to Shakespeare alone. In art, in the power of... ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Windham Press is committed to bringing the lost cultural heritage of ages past into the 21st century through high-quality reproductions of original, classic printed works at affordable prices. This book has been carefully crafted to utilize the original images of antique books rather than error-prone OCR text. This also preserves the work of the original typesetters of these classics, unknown craftsmen who laid out the text, often by hand, of each and every page you will read. Their subtle art involving judgment and interaction with the text is in many ways superior and more human than the mechanical methods utilized today, and gave each book a unique, hand-crafted feel in its text that connected the reader organically to the art of bindery and book-making. We think these benefits are worth the occasional imperfection resulting from the age of these books at the time of scanning, and their vintage feel provides a connection to the past that goes beyond the mere words of the text.

The love affair between two of the Victorian era's most famous poets is one of passion, tragedy, illness, and ultimately, endurance. Collected here are their love letters, which capture their courtship, their blossoming love, and their forbidden marriage. This is the story of one of history’s great love affairs. The relationship between Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning began in his admiring her poetry. His audacious first letter moves from loving her books to loving her. She was alarmed by his "extravagance", and worried that he might substitute lioness-worship for real feeling. Much of her hesitation came from knowing that love can bring injury as well as boon. She had suffered such injury. The fullness of their love is revealed in these letters.

If Sordello is a book-length poem, then The Ring and the Book-in its day regarded as Browning's greatest achievement, but today seemingly out of fashion-is something different. It is in fact a great novel, but one presented in blank verse, almost 21,000 lines of it, and in twelve books, each representing a different view of the action (a court case involving adultery and murder) by one of the protagonists. Why it has been called an "epic poem" is a puzzle; it is epic only in length; it is a poem only because it is in verse. Pushkin's Yevgeny Onegin is everywhere regarded as a novel, although it is in verse. The Ring and the Book is the greatest of all English verse novels; it is one of the great English novels of the 19th century; it is a remarkably modern novel in terms of narrative technique; it is, by any standard,s a great work of English Literature. It is offered by Shearsman in the author's bicentenary year, as it simply should not be out of print...

A book-length poem that caused great consternation when it first appeared in 1840, Sordello became a byword for poetic difficulty, both because of its unfamiliar subject-matter (as now, few people had a grasp of the arcana of Italian medieval politics), but also because of Browning's verse style. His language is here impacted, with the reader needing to be alert to follow the twists and turns of the narrative. Sordello is an important work, and crucial in Browning's development. It is also an astonishing work to come from the pen of a 28-year-old, and one can see why Ezra Pound treated it so seriously when he was about to embark upon The Cantos.

In Browning's bicentenary year, Shearsman publishes several volumes devoted to his work, starting with a collection of his shorter "long" poems, organised as the poet himself wished. 'The Pied Piper of Hamelin' is here, alongside 'My Last Duchess' and a number of other acknowledged classics, as well as poems that will be less familiar to modern readers. Browning divided his shorter long poems into groups: Dramatic Lyrics, Dramatic Romances, and Men and Women (also the title of one of his verse collections). Master of the dramatic monologue, spoken by a bewildering number of different figures, as well as by slippery, unreliable narrators, Browning often appears a far more modern figure than he is given credit for.

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