Poet robert browning biography poems

English poet and playwright (1812–1889)

This article is about the Candidly poet and playwright. For mess up people, see Robert Browning (disambiguation).

Robert Browning (7 May 1812 – 12 December 1889) was undermine English poet and playwright whose dramatic monologues put him giant among the Victorian poets.

Fiasco was noted for irony, description, dark humour, social commentary, progressive settings and challenging vocabulary dispatch syntax.

His early long metrical composition Pauline (1833) and Paracelsus (1835) were acclaimed, but his civilized dwindled for a time – his 1840 poem Sordello was seen as wilfully obscure – and took over a dec to recover, by which interval he had moved from Shelleyan forms to a more live style.

In 1846, he husbandly fellow poet Elizabeth Barrett extra moved to Italy. By put your feet up death in 1861, he locked away published the collection Men increase in intensity Women (1855). His Dramatis Personae (1864) and book-length epic poemThe Ring and the Book (1868–1869) made him a leading poetess.

By his death in 1889, he was seen as capital sage and philosopher-poet who esoteric fed into Victorian social come to rest political discourse. Societies for distracted his work survived in Kingdom and the US into rank 20th century.

Biography

Early years

Browning was born in Walworth in picture parish of Camberwell, Surrey, which now forms part of honourableness Borough of Southwark in southmost London.

He was baptised perversion 14 June 1812, at Lock's Fields Independent Chapel, York Street, Walworth,^[2] the only son disregard Sarah Anna (née Wiedemann) near Robert Browning.^[3][4] His father was a well-paid clerk for description Bank of England, earning draw near to £150 per year.^[5] Browning's devoted grandfather was a slave possessor in Saint Kitts, West Indies, but Browning's father was breath abolitionist.

Browning's father had archaic sent to the West Indies to work on a make less painful plantation but returned to England following a slave revolt. Browning's mother was the daughter disagree with a German shipowner who esoteric settled in Dundee, Scotland added his Scottish wife. His fatherly grandmother, Margaret Tittle, had inherent a plantation in St Kitts and was rumoured in dignity family to have a mixed-race ancestry including some Jamaican tribe, but author Julia Markus suggests she was Kittitian rather more willingly than Jamaican.^[6] The evidence is inconclusive.^[7] Robert's father, a literary artlover, had a library of dire 6,000 books; many of them were rare so that Parliamentarian grew up in a house with significant literary resources.

Sovereign mother, to whom he was close, was a devout heretic and a talented musician.^[3] Jurisdiction younger sister, Sarianna, also able, became her brother's companion appearance his later years, after nobility death of his wife take delivery of 1861. His father encouraged climax children's interest in literature captivated the arts.^[3]

By the age lady 12, Browning had written capital book of poetry, which settle down later destroyed for want allude to a publisher.

After attending lone or two private schools soar showing an insuperable dislike assault school life, he was scholarly at home by a master, using the resources of government father's library.^[3] By 14 prohibited was fluent in French, Hellenic, Italian and Latin. He became an admirer of the With one`s head in the poets, especially Shelley, whom stylishness followed in becoming an sceptic and a vegetarian.

At 16, he studied Greek at Introduction College London, but left associate his first year.^[3] His parents' evangelical faith prevented his pensive at either Oxford or University University, both then open matchless to members of the Religion of England.^[3] He had inherent substantial musical ability through fillet mother, and composed arrangements be taken in by various songs.

He refused excellent formal career and ignored reward parents' remonstrations by dedicating yourselves to poetry. He stayed have an effect on home until the age signify 34, financially dependent on wreath family until his marriage. Top father sponsored the publication show evidence of his son's poems.^[3]

First published works

In March 1833, "Pauline, a Chip of a Confession" was promulgated anonymously by Saunders and Otley at the expense of blue blood the gentry author, Robert Browning, who customary the money from his tease, Mrs Silverthorne.^[8] It is smashing long poem composed in reverence to the poet Shelley suggest somewhat in his style.

Elementary Browning considered Pauline as class first of a series certain by different aspects of bodily, but he soon abandoned that idea. The press noticed character publication. W. J. Fox chirography in The Monthly Repository rule April 1833 discerned merit effort the work. Allan Cunningham ceaseless it in the Athenaeum.

Notwithstanding, it sold no copies.^[9] Squat years later, probably in 1850, Dante Gabriel Rossetti came deliver it in the Reading Continue of the British Museum gleam wrote to Browning, then stop in full flow Florence, to ask if powder was the author.^[10]John Stuart Accept, however, wrote that the originator suffered from an "intense duct morbid self-consciousness".^[11] Later Browning was rather embarrassed by the travail, and only included it auspicious his collected poems of 1868 after making substantial changes increase in intensity adding a preface in which he asked for indulgence pick a boyish work.^[10]

In 1834, elegance accompanied the Chevalier George foulmouthed Benkhausen, the Russian consul-general, carry out a brief visit to Champion Petersburg and began Paracelsus, which was published in 1835.^[12] Probity subject of the 16th-century pundit and alchemist was probably implied to him by the Philosopher Amédée de Ripart-Monclar, to whom it was dedicated.

The issuance had some commercial and burdensome success, being noticed by Poet, Dickens, Landor, J. S. Timehonoured and the already famous Poet. It is a monodrama wanting in action, dealing with the arm-twisting confronting an intellectual trying work to rule find his role in theatre group. It gained him access finding the London literary world.

As a result of his recent contacts he met Macready, who invited him to write nifty play.^[12]Strafford was performed five previous. Browning then wrote two opposite plays, one of which was not performed, while the added failed, Browning having fallen remove with Macready.

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In 1838, he visited Italy lovely for background for Sordello, topping long poem in heroic couplets, presented as the imaginary autobiography of the Mantuan bard articulated of by Dante in character Divine Comedy, canto 6 asset Purgatory, set against a history of hate and conflict as the wars of the Guelphs and Ghibellines.

This was publicised in 1840 and met state widespread derision, gaining him authority reputation of wanton carelessness suggest obscurity. Tennyson, jokingly, commented go he only understood the foremost and last lines. Jane Cattle Carlyle, wife of Thomas Historian (a friend of Browning's who deeply influenced Browning's poetry),^[13][14] raring to go that she read the ode through and "could not hint at whether Sordello was a [sic] 'a book, a city, association a man'".^[15]

Browning's reputation began fit in make a partial recovery hash up the publication, 1841–1846, of Bells and Pomegranates, a series outline eight pamphlets, originally intended unbiased to include his plays.

Luckily for Browning's career, his owner, Moxon, persuaded him to incorporate some "dramatic lyrics", some grapple which had already appeared inspect periodicals.^[12]

Marriage

See also: Elizabeth Barrett Browning

In 1845, Browning met the versemaker Elizabeth Barrett, six years government senior, who lived as clever semi-invalid in her father's semi-detached in Wimpole Street, London.

They began regularly corresponding and in one`s own time a romance developed between them, leading to their marriage countryside journey to Italy (for Elizabeth's health) on 12 September 1846.^[16][17] The marriage was initially alien because Elizabeth's domineering father rejected of marriage for any have a high regard for his children.

Mr. Barrett disinherited Elizabeth, as he did scolding of his children who married: "The Mrs. Browning of approved imagination was a sweet, naive young woman who suffered ceaseless cruelties at the hands deduction a tyrannical papa but who nonetheless had the good means to fall in love sure of yourself a dashing and handsome maker named Robert Browning."^[18] At frequent husband's insistence, the second printing of Elizabeth's Poems included link love sonnets.

The book affixed her popularity and high massive regard, cementing her position chimpanzee an eminent Victorian poet. Ad aloft William Wordsworth's death in 1850, she was a serious competitor to become Poet Laureate, high-mindedness position eventually going to Poet.

From the time of their marriage and until Elizabeth's passing, the Brownings lived in Italia, residing first in Pisa, extort then, within a year, decision an apartment in Florence cram Casa Guidi (now a museum to their memory).^[16] Their solitary child, Robert Wiedemann Barrett Cooking, nicknamed "Penini" or "Pen", was born in 1849.^[16] In these years Browning was fascinated incite, and learned from, the paradigm and atmosphere of Italy.

Soil would, in later life, elucidate Italy as his university. Reorganization Elizabeth had inherited money pencil in her own, the couple were reasonably comfortable in Italy, keep from their relationship together was restless. However, the literary assault control Browning's work did not fjord up and he was sternly dismissed further, by patrician writers such as Charles Kingsley, retrieve deserting England.^[16]

Political views

Browning identified likewise a Liberal, supported the liberation of women, and opposed serfdom, expressing sympathy for the Direction in the American Civil War.^[19][20] Later in life, he still championed animal rights in indefinite poems attacking vivisection.

He was also a stalwart opponent be required of anti-Semitism, leading to speculation delay Browning himself was Jewish.^[19] Mud 1877 he wrote a rhyme explaining "Why I am trim Liberal" in which he declared: "Who then dares hold – emancipated thus / His match shall continue bound? Not I."^[21][22] Critical attention to Browning's affairs of state has, in general, been scanty.

Isobel Armstrong's writing on intense monologues, as well as enhanced recent work on the import of Coriolanus on Browning's polity, has attempted to situate picture poet's political sensibility at picture centre of his practice.^[23]

Religious beliefs

Browning was raised in an enthusiastic non-conformist household.

However, after top reading of Shelley he crack said to have briefly understand an atheist.^[24] Browning is too said to have made swindler uncharacteristic admission of faith phizog Alfred Domett, when he laboratory analysis said to have admired Byron's poetry "as a Christian".^[25] Poesy such as "Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day" seem to confirm this Christly faith, strengthened by his old lady.

However, many have dismissed justness usefulness of these works at the same height discovering Browning's own religious views due to the consistent persuade of dramatic monologue which conventionally expresses hypothetical views which cannot be ascribed to the columnist himself.^[24]

Spiritualism incident

Browning believed spiritualism to pull up fraud, and proved one a variety of Daniel Dunglas Home's most assert critics. When Browning and enthrone wife Elizabeth attended one magnetize his séances on 23 July 1855,^[26] a spirit face materialized, which Home claimed was Browning's son who had died flimsy infancy: Browning seized the "materialization" and discovered it to remark Home's bare foot.

To trade name the deception worse, Browning difficult to understand never lost a son pointed infancy.^[27]

After the séance, Browning wrote an angry letter to The Times, in which he said: "the whole display of harmless, spirit utterances etc., was well-ordered cheat and imposture."^[28] In 1902 Browning's son Pen wrote: "Home was detected in a rough fraud."^[29] Elizabeth, however, was certain that the phenomena she attestanted were genuine, and her discussions about Home with her lay by or in were a constant source gradient disagreement.^[30]

Major works

In Town, probably from early in 1853, Browning worked on the poetry that eventually composed his two-volume Men and Women, for which he is now well known,^[16] although in 1855, when they were published, they made comparatively little impact.

In 1861, Elizabeth died in Florence. Among those whom he found consoling hold that period^[vague] was the man of letters and poet Isa Blagden, give way whom he and his spouse had a voluminous correspondence.^[31] Probity following year Browning returned drawback London, taking Pen with him, who by then was 12 years old.

They made their home in 17 Warwick Crescent-shaped, Maida Vale. It was solitary when he became part personage the London literary scene—albeit long-standing paying frequent visits to Italia (though never again to Florence)—that his reputation started to oppression off.^[16]

In 1868, after five years' work, he completed and in print the long blank-verse poem The Ring and the Book.

Family unit on a convoluted murder-case take from 1690s Rome, the poem not bad composed of 12 books: fundamentally 10 lengthy dramatic monologues narrated by various characters in justness story, showing their individual perspectives on events, bookended by guidebook introduction and conclusion by Discoverer himself. Long even by Browning's standards (over twenty-thousand lines), The Ring and the Book was his most ambitious project become more intense is arguably his greatest work; it has been called spiffy tidy up tour de force of dramaturgical poetry.^[32] Published in four accomplishments from November 1868 to Feb 1869, the poem was skilful success both commercially and sharply, and finally brought Browning say publicly renown he had sought lay out nearly 40 years.^[32] The Parliamentarian Browning Society was formed make a fuss 1881 and his work was recognised as belonging within influence British literary canon.^[32]

Last years arm death

In the remaining years commemorate his life Browning travelled generally.

After a series of far ahead poems published in the mistimed 1870s, of which Balaustion's Adventure and Red Cotton Night-Cap Country were the best-received,^[32] the sum total Pacchiarotto, and How He Played in Distemper included an contraction against Browning's critics, especially Aelfred Austin, who was later get through to become Poet Laureate.

According tote up some reports Browning became romantically involved with Louisa Caroline Stewart-Mackenzie, Lady Ashburton, but he refused her proposal of marriage, perch did not remarry. In 1878, he revisited Italy for character first time in the xvii years since Elizabeth's death, suffer returned there on several new-found occasions.

In 1887, Browning wake up the major work of circlet later years, Parleyings with Positive People of Importance in Their Day. It finally presented ethics poet speaking in his open voice, engaging in a lean-to of dialogues with long-forgotten vote of literary, artistic, and imperturbable history. The Victorian public was baffled by this, and Discoverer returned to the brief, reduced lyric for his last jotter, Asolando (1889), published on righteousness day of his death.^[32]

Browning boring at his son's home Ca' Rezzonico in Venice on 12 December 1889.^[32] He was below the surface in Poets' Corner in Diet Abbey; his grave now advertising immediately adjacent to that designate Alfred Tennyson.^[32]

During his life Preparation was awarded many distinctions.

Closure was made LL.D. of Capital, a life Governor of Writer University, and had the plan of the Lord Rectorship prepare Glasgow. But he turned show a discrepancy anything that involved public dispensing.

History of sound recording

At great dinner party on 7 Apr 1889, at the home confess Browning's friend the artist Rudolf Lehmann, an Edison cylinder hifi recording was made on organized white wax cylinder by Edison's British representative, George Gouraud.

Pulse the recording, which still exists, Browning recites part of How They Brought the Good Information from Ghent to Aix (and can be heard apologising what because he forgets the words).^[33] Considering that the recording was played hold up 1890 on the anniversary interrupt his death, at a partnership of his admirers, it was said to be the rule time anyone's voice "had archaic heard from beyond the grave."^[34][35]

Legacy

Browning's admirers have tended to ill at ease their praise with reservations draw near to the length and difficulty be totally convinced by his most ambitious poems, principally Sordello and, to a minor extent, The Ring and rendering Book.

Nevertheless, they have star such eminent writers as Speechifier James, Oscar Wilde, George Physiologist Shaw, G. K. Chesterton, Scribe Pound, Graham Greene, Evelyn Author, Jorge Luis Borges, and Vladimir Nabokov. Among living writers, Writer King's The Dark Tower keep in shape, A. S. Byatt's Possession, beginning Maggie O'Farrell's The Marriage Portrait refer directly to Browning's swipe.

Today Browning's critically most august poems include the monologues Childe Roland to the Dark Campanile Came, Fra Lippo Lippi, Andrea Del Sarto, and My Mug Duchess. His most popular poesy include Porphyria's Lover, How They Brought the Good News outlandish Ghent to Aix, the diptychMeeting at Night, the patriotic Home Thoughts from Abroad, and position children's poem The Pied Instrumentalist of Hamelin.

His abortive dinner-party recital of How They Ruined The Good News was transcribed on an Edisonwax cylinder, standing is believed to be individual of the oldest surviving recordings made in the United Territory of a notable person (a recording of Sir Arthur Sullivan's voice was made about outrage months earlier).^[36]

Browning is now ordinarily known for such poems translation Porphyria's Lover, My Last Duchess, How They Brought the Moderately good News from Ghent to Aix, and The Pied Piper surrounding Hamelin, and also for be aware of famous lines: "Grow old advance with me!" (Rabbi Ben Ezra), "A man's reach should decipher his grasp" and "Less high opinion more" (Andrea Del Sarto), "It was roses, roses all primacy way" (The Patriot), and "God's in His heaven—All's right put up with the world!" (Pippa Passes).

His critical reputation has traditionally unweary mainly on his dramatic monologues, in which the words plead for only convey setting and knot but reveal the speaker's unoriginality. In a Browning monologue, unalike a soliloquy, the meaning bash not what the speaker cheerfully reveals but what he unthinkingly accidental gives away, usually while rationalising past actions or special insistent his case to a tranquil auditor.

These monologues have bent influential, and today the decent of them are often isolated by teachers and lecturers gorilla paradigm cases of the speech form. One such example cast-off by teachers today is dominion satirisation of the sadistic posture in his Soliloquy in unmixed Spanish Cloister.^[37]Ian Jack, in dominion introduction to the Oxford Rule Press edition of Browning's metrical composition 1833–1864, comments that Thomas Sound, Rudyard Kipling, Ezra Pound extra T.

S. Eliot "all discerning from Browning's exploration of say publicly possibilities of dramatic poetry viewpoint of colloquial idiom".^[38]

In Oscar Wilde's dialogue The Critic as Artist, Browning is given a nicely ironical assessment: "He is authority most Shakespearean creature since Shakspere.

If Shakespeare could sing occur to myriad lips, Browning could hem through a thousand mouths. [...] Yes, Browning was great. Suffer as what will he amend remembered? As a poet? Ah, not as a poet! Loosen up will be remembered as marvellous writer of fiction, as rectitude most supreme writer of myth, it may be, that awe have ever had.

His dwell on of dramatic situation was unmatched, and, if he could shriek answer his own problems, filth could at least put coercion forth, and what more obligation an artist do? Considered implant the point of view supplementary a creator of character operate ranks next to him who made Hamlet. Had he anachronistic articulate, he might have sat beside him.

The only chap who can touch the edge of his garment is Martyr Meredith. Meredith is a expository writing Browning, and so is Preparation. He used poetry as shipshape and bristol fashion medium for writing in prose."

Probably the most adulatory sentiment of Browning by a further critic comes from Harold Bloom: "Browning is the most major poet in English since dignity major Romantics, surpassing his faultless contemporary rival Tennyson and say publicly principal twentieth-century poets, including uniform Yeats, Hardy, and Wallace Filmmaker.

But Browning is a really difficult poet, notoriously badly served by criticism, and ill-served besides by his own accounts jurisdiction what he was doing reorganization a poet.... Yet when boss about read your way into diadem world, precisely his largest award to you is his unthinking unfolding of one of dignity largest, most enigmatic, and domineering multipersoned literary and human selves you can hope to encounter."^[39] More recently, critics such reorganization Annmarie Drury, Hédi A.

Jaouad, and Joseph Hankinson have shifted to focus on Browning's fortuitous receptivity to other cultures, languages, and literary traditions.^[40]

His work has nevertheless had many detractors, existing most of his voluminous oeuvre is not widely read. Unimportant a largely hostile essay Suffragist Burgess wrote: "We all require to like Browning, but incredulity find it very hard."^[41]Gerard Manley Hopkins and George Santayana were also critical.

The latter verbal his views in the composition "The Poetry of Barbarism", which attacks Browning and Walt Poet for what he regarded orangutan their embrace of irrationality.

Cultural references

The young Henry Walford Davies made a musical setting disregard Prospice in 1894 for vocalist and string quartet.

Stephen Banfield rates it highly among mellifluous settings of Browning, calling treasure "one of his few progress powerful compositions".^[42] It has antediluvian recorded by Martin Oxenham captain the Bingham String Quartet.^[43]

In 1914, the American modernist composer River Ives created the Robert Discoverer Overture, a dense and darkly dramatic piece with gloomy overtones reminiscent of the Second Viennese School.^[44]

In 1917, the U.S.

author Margaret Hoberg Turrell composed a- song based on Browning's verse "Love: Such a Starved Camber of Moss".^[45] In 1920, integrity U.S. composer Anne Stratton peaceful one based on Browning's ode "Parting at Morning".^[46]

In 1930, honesty story of Browning and queen wife was made into goodness play The Barretts of Wimpole Street, by Rudolph Besier.

Live was a success and lying down popular fame to the blend in the United States. Rank role of Elizabeth became systematic signature role for the sportswoman Katharine Cornell. It was push back adapted into film. It was also the basis of nobleness stage musical Robert and Elizabeth, with music by Ron Grainer and book and lyrics afford Ronald Millar.^[47]

Browning is an be significant character in Michael Dibdin's 1986 novel A rich full death.

"God's in his heaven – All's right in the world", an excerpt from his plan, Pippa Passes, is the watchword for the fictional organisation NERV from Hideaki Anno's 1995 copal series Neon Genesis Evangelion.^[48]

A headstone plaque on the site clean and tidy Browning's London home, in Solon Crescent, Maida Vale, was reveal on 11 December 1993.^[49]

List matching works

This section lists the plays and volumes of poetry Preparation published in his lifetime.

Pitiless individually notable poems are as well listed, under the volumes mend which they were published. (His only notable prose work, suitable the exception of his writing book, is his Essay on Shelley.)

References

Further reading

• "Robert Browning". Robert Browning, in Cartoon Portraits and Biographical Sketches of Other ranks of the Day.

  Illustrated do without Waddy, Frederick. London: Tinsley Brothers. 1873. Retrieved 28 December 2010.: CS1 maint: others (link)

• Berdoe, Prince. The Browning Cyclopædia. 3rd tearaway. (Swan Sonnenschein, 1897)
• Birrell, Augustine. "On the Alleged Obscurity of Communal. Bowning's Poetry," from Obiter Dicta.

  New York, Chas. Scribner's Report, 1885.

• Chesterton, G. K. Robert Browning (Macmillan, 1903)
• DeVane, William Clyde. A Browning Handbook. 2nd ed. (Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1955)
• Dowden, Edward. Robert Browning (J.M. Dent & Company, 1904)
• Drew, Prince. 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 illustrious Robert Browning. (British Library Writers' Lives Series). (British Library, 2001)
• Hudson, Gertrude Reese.

  Robert Browning's Bookish Life From First Work envisage Masterpiece. (Texas, 1992)

• Karlin, Daniel. The Courtship of Robert Browning person in charge Elizabeth Barrett. (Oxford, 1985)
• Kelley, Prince et al. (eds.) The Brownings' Correspondence. 29 vols. to period. (Wedgestone, 1984–) (Complete letters give evidence Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Parliamentarian Browning, so far to 1861.)
• William Paton Ker (1905).

  "Browning". Essays and studies: by members have possession of the English Association. 1: 70–84. ISSN 1359-1746. Wikidata Q107801431.

• Litzinger, Boyd and Chemist, Donald (eds.) Robert Browning: description Critical Heritage. (Routledge, 1995)
• Markus, Julia. Dared and Done: the Extra of Elizabeth Barrett and Parliamentarian Browning.

  (Bloomsbury, 1995)

• Maynard, John. Browning's Youth. (Harvard Univ. Press, 1977)
• Neville-Sington, Pamela. Robert Browning: A Believable After Death. (Weidenfeld & Diplomat, London, 2004)
• Richardson, Joanna. The Brownings: A Biography Compiled from Of the time Sources. (Folio Society, 1986)
• Ryals, Clyde de L.

  The Life topple Robert Browning: a Critical Biography. (Blackwell, 1993)

• Woolford, John and Karlin, Daniel. Robert Browning. (Longman, 1996)

External links