His early long poemsPauline (1833) andParacelsus (1835) were acclaimed, but his reputation dwindled for a time – his 1840 poemSordello was seen as wilfully obscure – and took over a decade to recover, by which time he had moved fromShelleyan forms to a more personal style. In 1846, he married fellow poetElizabeth Barrett and moved to Italy. By her death in 1861, he had published the collectionMen and Women (1855). HisDramatis Personae (1864) and book-lengthepic poemThe Ring and the Book (1868–1869) made him a leading poet. By his death in 1889, he was seen as a sage and philosopher-poet who had fed into Victorian social and political discourse. Societies for studying his work survived in Britain and the US into the 20th century.
Browning was born inWalworth in the parish ofCamberwell, Surrey, which now forms part of theBorough of Southwark in south London. He was baptised on 14 June 1812, at Lock's Fields Independent Chapel, York Street, Walworth,[2] the only son of Sarah Anna (née Wiedemann) and Robert Browning.[3][4] His father was a well-paid clerk for theBank of England, earning about £150 per year.[5] Browning's paternal grandfather was a slave owner inSaint Kitts, West Indies, but Browning's father was anabolitionist. Browning's father had been sent to theWest Indies to work on a sugar plantation but returned to England following a slave revolt. Browning's mother was the daughter of a German shipowner who had settled inDundee, Scotland and his Scottish wife. His paternal grandmother, Margaret Tittle, had inherited a plantation in St Kitts and was rumoured in the family to have a mixed-race ancestry including some Jamaican blood, but author Julia Markus suggests she wasKittitian rather than Jamaican.[6] The evidence is inconclusive.[7] Robert's father, a literary collector, had a library of some 6,000 books; many of them were rare so that Robert grew up in a household with significant literary resources. His mother, to whom he was close, was a devoutnonconformist and a talented musician.[3] His younger sister, Sarianna, also gifted, became her brother's companion in his later years, after the death of his wife in 1861. His father encouraged his children's interest in literature and the arts.[3]
By the age of 12, Browning had written a book of poetry, which he later destroyed for want of a publisher. After attending one or two private schools and showing an insuperable dislike of school life, he was educated at home by a tutor, using the resources of his father's library.[3] By 14 he was fluent in French,Greek, Italian and Latin. He became an admirer of theRomantic poets, especiallyShelley, whom he followed in becoming anatheist and a vegetarian. At 16, he studied Greek atUniversity College London, but left after his first year.[3] His parents'evangelical faith prevented his studying at eitherOxford orCambridge University, both then open only to members of theChurch of England.[3] He had inherited substantial musical ability through his mother, and composed arrangements of various songs. He refused a formal career and ignored his parents' remonstrations by dedicating himself to poetry. He stayed at home until the age of 34, financially dependent on his family until his marriage. His father sponsored the publication of his son's poems.[3]
Some one shall somehow run a muck With this old world, for want of strife Sound asleep: contrive, contrive To rouse us, Waring! Who's alive? Our men scarce seem in earnest now: Distinguished names!—but 'tis, somehow, As if they played at being names Still more distinguished, like the games Of children.
Bells and Pomegranates No. III: Dramatic Lyrics (1842)
In March 1833,"Pauline, a Fragment of a Confession" was published anonymously by Saunders and Otley at the expense of the author, Robert Browning, who received the money from his aunt, Mrs Silverthorne.[8] It is a long poem composed in homage to the poetShelley and somewhat in his style. Originally Browning consideredPauline as the first of a series written by different aspects of himself, but he soon abandoned this idea. The press noticed the publication. W. J. Fox writing inThe Monthly Repository of April 1833 discerned merit in the work.Allan Cunningham praised it in theAthenaeum. However, it sold no copies.[9] Some years later, probably in 1850,Dante Gabriel Rossetti came across it in the Reading Room of theBritish Museum and wrote to Browning, then inFlorence, to ask if he was the author.[10]John Stuart Mill, however, wrote that the author suffered from an "intense and morbid self-consciousness".[11] Later Browning was rather embarrassed by the work, and only included it in his collected poems of 1868 after making substantial changes and adding a preface in which he asked for indulgence for a boyish work.[10]
In 1834, he accompanied the Chevalier George de Benkhausen, the Russian consul-general, on a brief visit toSt Petersburg and beganParacelsus, which was published in 1835.[12] The subject of the16th-century savant and alchemist was probably suggested to him by the Comte Amédée de Ripart-Monclar, to whom it was dedicated. The publication had some commercial and critical success, being noticed byWordsworth,Dickens,Landor, J. S. Mill and the already famousTennyson. It is a monodrama without action, dealing with the problems confronting an intellectual trying to find his role in society. It gained him access to the London literary world.
As a result of his new contacts he metMacready, who invited him to write a play.[12]Strafford was performed five times. Browning then wrote two other plays, one of which was not performed, while the other failed, Browning having fallen out with Macready.
In 1838, he visited Italy looking for background forSordello, a long poem in heroic couplets, presented as the imaginary biography of the Mantuan bard spoken of byDante in theDivine Comedy, canto 6 of Purgatory, set against a background of hate and conflict during the wars of theGuelphs and Ghibellines. This was published in 1840 and met with widespread derision, gaining him the reputation of wanton carelessness and obscurity. Tennyson, jokingly, commented that he only understood the first and last lines.Jane Welsh Carlyle, wife ofThomas Carlyle (a friend of Browning's who deeply influenced Browning's poetry),[13][14] quipped that she read the poem through and "could not tell whether Sordello was a [sic] 'a book, a city, or a man'".[15]
Browning's reputation began to make a partial recovery with the publication, 1841–1846, ofBells and Pomegranates, a series of eight pamphlets, originally intended just to include his plays. Fortunately for Browning's career, his publisher, Moxon, persuaded him to include some "dramatic lyrics", some of which had already appeared in periodicals.[12]
In 1845, Browning met the poetElizabeth Barrett, six years his senior, who lived as a semi-invalid in her father's house inWimpole Street, London. They began regularly corresponding and gradually a romance developed between them, leading to their marriage and journey to Italy (for Elizabeth's health) on 12 September 1846.[16][17] The marriage was initially secret because Elizabeth's domineering father disapproved of marriage for any of his children. Mr. Barrett disinherited Elizabeth, as he did each of his children who married: "The Mrs. Browning of popular imagination was a sweet, innocent young woman who suffered endless cruelties at the hands of a tyrannical papa but who nonetheless had the good fortune to fall in love with a dashing and handsome poet named Robert Browning."[18] At her husband's insistence, the second edition of Elizabeth'sPoems included her love sonnets. The book increased her popularity and high critical regard, cementing her position as an eminent Victorian poet. UponWilliam Wordsworth's death in 1850, she was a serious contender to becomePoet Laureate, the position eventually going toTennyson.
From the time of their marriage and until Elizabeth's death, the Brownings lived in Italy, residing first inPisa, and then, within a year, finding an apartment inFlorence atCasa Guidi (now a museum to their memory).[16] Their only child,Robert Wiedemann Barrett Browning, nicknamed "Penini" or "Pen", was born in 1849.[16] In these years Browning was fascinated by, and learned from, the art and atmosphere of Italy. He would, in later life, describe Italy as his university. As Elizabeth had inherited money of her own, the couple were reasonably comfortable in Italy, and their relationship together was happy. However, the literary assault on Browning's work did not let up and he was critically dismissed further, by patrician writers such asCharles Kingsley, for deserting England.[16]
Browning identified as aLiberal, supported the emancipation of women, and opposed slavery, expressing sympathy for the North in theAmerican Civil War.[19][20] Later in life, he even championed animal rights in several poems attacking vivisection. He was also a stalwart opponent of anti-Semitism, leading to speculation that Browning himself was Jewish.[19] In 1877 he wrote a poem explaining "Why I am a Liberal" in which he declared: "Who then dares hold – emancipated thus / His fellow shall continue bound? Not I."[21][22] Critical attention to Browning's politics has, in general, been sparse.Isobel Armstrong's writing on dramatic monologues, as well as more recent work on the influence ofCoriolanus on Browning's politics, has attempted to situate the poet's political sensibility at the centre of his practice.[23]
Browning was raised in an evangelical non-conformist household. However, after his reading of Shelley he is said to have briefly become an atheist.[24] Browning is also said to have made an uncharacteristic admission of faith to Alfred Domett, when he is said to have admired Byron's poetry "as a Christian".[25] Poems such as "Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day" seem to confirm this Christian faith, strengthened by his wife. However, many have dismissed the usefulness of theseworks at discovering Browning's own religious views due to the consistent use of dramatic monologue which regularly expresses hypothetical views which cannot be ascribed to the author himself.[24]
Now, don't, sir! Don't expose me! Just this once! This was the first and only time, I'll swear,— Look at me,—see, I kneel,—the only time, I swear, I ever cheated,—yes, by the soul Of Her who hears—(your sainted mother, sir!) All, except this last accident, was truth— This little kind of slip!—and even this, It was your own wine, sir, the good champagne, (I took it forCatawba—you're so kind) Which put the folly in my head!
Dramatis Personae (1864)
Browning believedspiritualism to be fraud, and proved one ofDaniel Dunglas Home's most adamant critics. When Browning and his wifeElizabeth attended one of his séances on 23 July 1855,[26] a spirit face materialized, which Home claimed was Browning's son who had died in infancy: Browning seized the "materialization" and discovered it to be Home's bare foot. To make the deception worse, Browning had never lost a son in infancy.[27]
After the séance, Browning wrote an angry letter toThe Times, in which he said: "the whole display of hands, spirit utterances etc., was a cheat and imposture."[28] In 1902 Browning's sonPen wrote: "Home was detected in a vulgar fraud."[29] Elizabeth, however, was convinced that the phenomena she witnessed were genuine, and her discussions about Home with her husband were a constant source of disagreement.[30]
He stood and watched the cobbler at his trade, The man who slices lemons into drink, The coffee-roaster'sbrazier, and the boys That volunteer to help him turn its winch. He glanced o'er books on stalls with half an eye, And fly-leaf ballads on the vendor's string, And broad-edge bold-print posters by the wall. He took such cognizance of men and things, If any beat a horse, you felt he saw; If any cursed a woman, he took note; Yet stared at nobody—you stared at him, And found, less to your pleasure than surprise, He seemed to know you and expect as much.
Men and Women (1855)
In Florence, probably from early in 1853, Browning worked on the poems that eventually composed his two-volumeMen and Women, for which he is now well known,[16] although in 1855, when they were published, they made relatively little impact.
In 1861, Elizabeth died in Florence. Among those whom he found consoling in that period[vague] was the novelist and poetIsa Blagden, with whom he and his wife had a voluminous correspondence.[31] The following year Browning returned to London, taking Pen with him, who by then was 12 years old. They made their home in 17Warwick Crescent,Maida Vale. It was only when he became part of the London literary scene—albeit while paying frequent visits to Italy (though never again to Florence)—that his reputation started to take off.[16]
In 1868, after five years' work, he completed and published the longblank-verse poemThe Ring and the Book. Based on a convoluted murder-case from 1690s Rome, the poem is composed of 12 books: essentially 10 lengthy dramatic monologues narrated by various characters in the story, showing their individual perspectives on events, bookended by an introduction and conclusion by Browning himself. Long even by Browning's standards (over twenty-thousand lines),The Ring and the Book was his most ambitious project and is arguably his greatest work; it has been called atour de force of dramatic poetry.[32] Published in four parts from November 1868 to February 1869, the poem was a success both commercially and critically, and finally brought Browning the renown he had sought for nearly 40 years.[32] The Robert Browning Society was formed in 1881 and his work was recognised as belonging within the British literary canon.[32]
Browning after death.1882 caricature fromPunch reading: "The Ring and Bookmaker from Red Cotton Nightcap country"
In the remaining years of his life Browning travelled extensively. After a series of long poems published in the early 1870s, of whichBalaustion's Adventure andRed Cotton Night-Cap Country were the best-received,[32] the volumePacchiarotto, and How He Worked in Distemper included an attack against Browning's critics, especiallyAlfred Austin, who was later to becomePoet Laureate. According to some reports Browning became romantically involved withLouisa Caroline Stewart-Mackenzie, Lady Ashburton, but he refused her proposal of marriage, and did not remarry. In 1878, he revisited Italy for the first time in the seventeen years since Elizabeth's death, and returned there on several further occasions. In 1887, Browning produced the major work of his later years,Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in Their Day. It finally presented the poet speaking in his own voice, engaging in a series of dialogues with long-forgotten figures of literary, artistic, and philosophic history. The Victorian public was baffled by this, and Browning returned to the brief, concise lyric for his last volume,Asolando (1889), published on the day of his death.[32]
During his life Browning was awarded many distinctions. He was madeLL.D. of Edinburgh, a life Governor of London University, and had the offer of theLord Rectorship of Glasgow. But he turned down anything that involved public speaking.
At a dinner party on 7 April 1889, at the home of Browning's friend the artistRudolf Lehmann, anEdison cylinder phonograph recording was made on a white wax cylinder byEdison's British representative,George Gouraud. In the recording, which still exists, Browning recites part ofHow They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix (and can be heard apologising when he forgets the words).[33] When the recording was played in 1890 on the anniversary of his death, at a gathering of his admirers, it was said to be the first time anyone's voice "had been heard from beyond the grave."[34][35]
His critical reputation has traditionally rested mainly on hisdramatic monologues, in which the words not only convey setting and action but reveal the speaker's character. In a Browning monologue, unlike asoliloquy, the meaning is not what the speaker voluntarily reveals but what he inadvertently gives away, usually whilerationalising past actions orspecial pleading his case to a silent auditor. These monologues have been influential, and today the best of them are often treated by teachers and lecturers as paradigm cases of the monologue form. One such example used by teachers today is his satirisation of the sadistic attitude in hisSoliloquy in a Spanish Cloister.[37]Ian Jack, in his introduction to the Oxford University Press edition of Browning's poems 1833–1864, comments thatThomas Hardy,Rudyard Kipling,Ezra Pound andT. S. Eliot "all learned from Browning's exploration of the possibilities of dramatic poetry and of colloquial idiom".[38]
In Oscar Wilde's dialogueThe Critic as Artist, Browning is given a famously ironical assessment: "He is the most Shakespearean creature since Shakespeare. If Shakespeare could sing with myriad lips, Browning could stammer through a thousand mouths. [...] Yes, Browning was great. And as what will he be remembered? As a poet? Ah, not as a poet! He will be remembered as a writer of fiction, as the most supreme writer of fiction, it may be, that we have ever had. His sense of dramatic situation was unrivalled, and, if he could not answer his own problems, he could at least put problems forth, and what more should an artist do? Considered from the point of view of a creator of character he ranks next to him who madeHamlet. Had he been articulate, he might have sat beside him. The only man who can touch the hem of his garment isGeorge Meredith. Meredith is a prose Browning, and so is Browning. He used poetry as a medium for writing in prose."
Probably the most adulatory judgment of Browning by a modern critic comes fromHarold Bloom: "Browning is the most considerable poet in English since the major Romantics, surpassing his great contemporary rivalTennyson and the principal twentieth-century poets, including evenYeats,Hardy, andWallace Stevens. But Browning is a very difficult poet, notoriously badly served bycriticism, and ill-served also by his own accounts of what he was doing as a poet.... Yet when you read your way into his world, precisely his largest gift to you is his involuntary unfolding of one of the largest, most enigmatic, and most multipersoned literary and human selves you can hope to encounter."[39] More recently, critics such as Annmarie Drury, Hédi A. Jaouad, and Joseph Hankinson have shifted to focus on Browning's surprising receptivity to other cultures, languages, and literary traditions.[40]
His work has nevertheless had many detractors, and most of his voluminous output is not widely read. In a largely hostile essayAnthony Burgess wrote: "We all want to like Browning, but we find it very hard."[41]Gerard Manley Hopkins andGeorge Santayana were also critical. The latter expressed his views in the essay "The Poetry of Barbarism", which attacks Browning andWalt Whitman for what he regarded as their embrace of irrationality.
A memorial plaque for a member of theVoluntary Aid Detachment, engraved with a quotation from the Epilogue to Browning'sAsolando. The inscription reads: "In Loving Memory of Louisa A. M. McGrigor Commandant V.A.D. Cornwall 22. Who died on service, March 31, 1917. Erected by her fellow workers in the British Red Cross Society, Women Unionist Association, Boy Scouts, Girl Guides and Friends.One who never turned her back but marched breast forward, Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake."
The youngHenry Walford Davies made a musical setting ofProspice in 1894 for baritone and string quartet.Stephen Banfield rates it highly among musical settings of Browning, calling it "one of his few very powerful compositions".[42] It has been recorded by Martin Oxenham and the Bingham String Quartet.[43]
In 1914, the American modernist composerCharles Ives created theRobert Browning Overture, a dense and darkly dramatic piece with gloomy overtones reminiscent of theSecond Viennese School.[44]
In 1917, the U.S. composerMargaret Hoberg Turrell composed a song based on Browning's poem "Love: Such a Starved Bank of Moss".[45] In 1920, the U.S. composerAnne Stratton composed one based on Browning's poem "Parting at Morning".[46]
Browning is an important character inMichael Dibdin's 1986 novelA rich full death.
"God's in his heaven – All's right in the world", an excerpt from his poem, Pippa Passes, is the slogan for the fictional organisation NERV fromHideaki Anno's 1995 anime seriesNeon Genesis Evangelion.[48]
A memorial plaque on the site of Browning's London home, in Warwick Crescent,Maida Vale, was unveiled on 11 December 1993.[49]
This section lists the plays and volumes of poetry Browning published in his lifetime. Some individually notable poems are also listed, under the volumes in which they were published. (His only notableprose work, with the exception of his letters, is hisEssay on Shelley.)
^Dared and done: the marriage of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning Knopf, 1995, University of Michigan, p. 112.ISBN978-0-679-41602-9
^The dramatic imagination of Robert Browning: a literary life, 2007. Richard S. Kennedy, Donald S. Hair, University of Missouri Press, p. 7.ISBN0-8262-1691-9
^Chesterton, G K (1951) [1903].Robert Browning. London: Macmillan Interactive Publishing.ISBN978-0-333-02118-7.
^Browning, Robert (2009). Roberts, Adam; Karlin, Daniel (eds.).The Major Works. Oxford World's Classics. Oxford University Press.ISBN978-0-19-955469-0.
^ab"III".The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 volumes (published 1907–1921). Vol. XIII.
^Sanders, Charles Richard (1974). "The Carlyle-Browning correspondence and relationship. I".Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, Manchester (Periodical).57 (1):213–246.doi:10.7227/BJRL.57.1.8.JSTORcommunity.28212026.
^Sanders, Charles Richard (1975). "The Carlyle-Browning correspondence and relationship. II".Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, Manchester (Periodical).57 (2):430–462.doi:10.7227/BJRL.57.2.9.JSTORcommunity.28212035.
^Browning, Robert. Ed. Karlin, Daniel (2004) Selected Poems Penguin
^abcdefBrowning, Robert. Ed. Karlin, Daniel (2004)Selected Poems Penguin p10
^John Casey. (2009).After Lives: A Guide to Heaven, Hell and Purgatory. Oxford. p. 373.ISBN978-0-19-997503-7 "The poet attended one of Home's seances where a face was materialized, which, Home's spirit guide announced, was that of Browning's dead son Browning seized the supposed materialized head, and it turned out to be the bare foot of Home. The deception was not helped by the fact that Browning never had lost a son in infancy."
^Frank Podmore. (1911).The Newer Spiritualism. Henry Holt and Company. p. 45
^Harry Houdini. (2011 reprint edition). Originally published in 1924.A Magician Among the Spirits. Cambridge University Press. p. 42.ISBN978-1-108-02748-9
^Peter Lamont. (2005).The First Psychic: The Extraordinary Mystery of a Notorious Victorian Wizard. Little, Brown & Company. p. 50.ISBN978-0-316-72834-8
Drew, Philip.The Poetry of Robert Browning: A critical introduction. (Methuen, 1970)
Finlayson, Iain.Browning: A Private Life. (HarperCollins, 2004)
Garrett, Martin (ed.).Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning: Interviews and Recollections. (Macmillan, 2000)
Garrett, Martin.Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning. (British Library Writers' Lives Series). (British Library, 2001)
Hudson, Gertrude Reese.Robert Browning's Literary Life From First Work to Masterpiece. (Texas, 1992)
Karlin, Daniel.The Courtship of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett. (Oxford, 1985)
Kelley, Philip et al. (eds.)The Brownings' Correspondence. 29 vols. to date. (Wedgestone, 1984–) (Complete letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning, so far to 1861.)
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