Robert Browning Biography and List of Works

English poet, noted for his mastery of dramatic monologue. Browning was long unsuccessful as a poet, and financially dependent upon his family until he was well into adulthood. He became a great Victorian poet. In his best works people from the past reveal their thoughts and lives as if speaking or thinking aloud.

A man can have but one life and one
death,
One heaven, one hell.

Robert Browning was born in London the son of Robert Browning, a wealthy clerk in the Bank of England, and Sarah Anna Wiedemann, of German-Scottish origin. He received scant formal education, but had access to his father's large (6,000 vols) library. In his teens, Browning discovered Shelley, adopting the author's confessionalism in poetry. Browning wrote his first poems under the influence of Shelley, who also inspired him to adopt atheist principles for a time. At the age of 16 he began to study at the newly established London University, returning home after a brief period.

In 1833 Browning published anonymously PAULINE: A FRAGMENT OF A CONFESSION. In 1834 he travelled to Russia, and in 1838 he made his first trip to Italy. Browning's early works attracted little attention until the publication of PARACELSUS (1835), which deals with the life of the Swiss alchemist. From 1837 to 1846 Browning attempted to write verse drama for the stage. During these years he met Carlyle, Dickens, and Tennyson, and formed several important friendships.

Between 1841 and 1846 Browning works appeared under the title BELLS AND POMEGRANATES, which contains several of his best-known lyrics, such as How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix, and PIPPA PASSES (1841), a dramatic poem that depicts a silk winder and his wandering in Italy. Among his earlier works is SORDELLO (1840), set against the background of restless southern Europe of the 13th century. It influenced Ezra Pound in his conception of the Cantos. However, Sordello's hostile reception shadowed Browning's reputation for over twenty years.

"Be sure I looked up her eyes
Happy and proud; at last I knew
Porphyria worshipped me; surprise
Made my heart swell, and still it grew
While I debated what to do.
That moment she was mine, mine, fair,
Perfectly pure and good; I found
A thing to do, and all her hair
In one long yellow string I wound
Three times her little throat around,
And strangled her. No pain felt she;
I am quite sure she felt no pain."
(from 'Porphyria's Lover' in Dramatic Lyrics, 1842)

In 1846 Browning married the poet Elizabeth Barrett (1806-1861), and settled with her in Florence. He produced comparatively little poetry during the next 15 years. When Elizabeth died in 1861, he moved to London with his son Robert Barrett Browning (1849-1912). There he wrote his greatest work, THE RING AND THE BOOK (1869), based on the proceedings of a murder trial in Rome in 1698. It consists of 10 verse narratives, all dealing with the same crime, each from a distinct viewpoint. Browning made poetry compete with prose, and uses idioms of ordinary speech in his text. A typical Browning poem tells of a key moment in the life of a prince, priest or painter of the Italian Renaissance.

In the 1850s and 1860s Browning's reputation began to revive. 1855saw the appearance of the masterpiece of his middle period, MEN AND WOMEN. With DRAMATIS PERSONAE (1864) and The Ring and the Book he was back in the literary scene. In 1866, after his fathers death, Browning lived with his sister, generally spending the summer season in London, and the rest of the year in the country or abroad. In the 1870s Browning published several works, including THE INN ALBUM (1875), a dramatic poem in which two couples use the visitors' book to convey messages, and a translation of Aeschylus' Agamemnon. Browning Society was founded in 1881 as an indication of the poet's status as a sage and celebrity.

Robert Browning died in his sons house in Venice, on December 12, 1889. Various difficulties made the poet's requested burial in Florence impossible, and his body was returned to England to be interred in Westminster Abbey.

They left you for their pleasure: till in due time, one by one,
Some with lives that came to nothing, some with deed as well undone,
Death stepped tacitly and took them where they never see the sun.
(from A Toccata of Galuppi's)

For further reading: A Browning Chronology by Martin Garrett (1999); Robert Browning by Adam Roberts (1997); Dared and Done: The Marriage of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning by Julia Markus (1995); Robert Browning, ed. by B. Litzinger (1995); Critical Essays on Robert Browning, ed. by Mary Ellis Gibson (1992); The Infinite Passion of Finite Hearts by P. Pathak (1992); Robert Browning by Joseph Bristow (1991); Robert Browning, ed. by Harold Bloom (1990); Browning As a Philosophical & Religious Teacher by Henry Jones (1989), Browning the Revisionary by John Woolford (1988); The Courtship of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett by D. Karlin (1986); Browning and Italy by Jakob Korg (1983); Browning for Beginners by Thomas Rain (1973); Browning's Major Poetry by I. Jack (1973); The Focusing Artifice by R.A. King (1969); The Dialectical Temper by W.D. Shaw (1968); The Bow and the Lyre by R.A. King (1957); Amphibian: a Reconsideration of Browning by H.C. Duffin (1956); Life by H.W. Griffin and H.C. Minchin (1936); Robert Browning by C.H. Herford (1905).

PAULINE: A FRAGMENT OF A CONFESSION, (1833)
PARACELSUS, (1835)
STAFFORD, (1837)
SORDELLO, (1840)
PIPPA PASSES, (1841)
BELLS AND POMEGRANATES, (1841)
DRAMATIC LYRICS, (1842)
KING VICTOR AND KING CHARLES, (1842)
THE RETURN OF THE DRUSES, (1843)
A BLORT ON THE 'SCUTCHEON', (1843)
COLOMBE'S BIRTHDAY, (1844)
DRAMATIC ROMANCES AND LYRICS, (1845)
DRAMATIC LYRICS AND ROMANCES, (1845)
LURIA AND A SOUL'S TRAGEDY, (1846)
CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY, (1850)
MEN AND WOMEN, (1855)
DRAMATIS PERSONAE, (1864)
THE RING AND THE BOOK, (1868)
BALAUSTION'S ADVENTURE, (1871)
PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAU, (1871)
FIFINE AT THE FAIR, (1872)
RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY, (1873)
THE INN ALBUM, (1875)
ARISTOPHANES' APOLOGY, (1875)
PACCHIAROTTO, (1876)
translation: AESCHYLUS'S AGAMEMNON, (1877)
LA SAISIAZ, (1878)
THE TWO POETS OF CROISIC, (1878)
DRAMATIC IDYLLS, (1879)
JOCOSERIA, (1883)
FERISHTAH'S FANCIES, (1884)
PARLEYINGS WITH CERTAIN PEOPLE OF IMPORTANCE IN THEIR DAY, (1887)
ASOLANDO, (1889)
LEARNED LADY: LETTERS FROM ROBERT BROWNING TO MRS. THOMAS FITZGRALD, (1966)
COMPLETE WORKS OF ROBERT BROWNING, (1969)
BROWNING'S LATER POETRY, (1871)
COMPLETE POEMS, (1992)
COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS, (1992)
collected edition, (1981)