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Robert Browning ( May 7 , 1812 – December 12 , 1889 ) was an English Poet and Playwright . EARLY LIFE Robert Browning was born in Camberwell , Surrey , the first son of Robert and Sarah Wiedemann Browning. His father was a man of fine intellect and equally fine character, who worked as a well-paid clerk in the Bank Of England and so managed to amass a library of around 6,000 Book s — many of them highly obscure and arcane. Thus Robert was raised in a household with good Literary resources. His mother, to whom he was ardently attached, was a devout Nonconformist , the daughter of a German shipowner who had settled in Dundee , and was alike intellectually and morally worthy of his affection. The only other member of the family was a younger sister, also highly gifted, who was the sympathetic companion of his later years. They lived simply, but his father encouraged Robert's interest in literature and the Art s. In his childhood he was distinguished by his love of poetry and natural history. At 12 he had written a book of poetry which he destroyed when he could not find a publisher. After being at one or two private schools, and showing an insuperable dislike to school life, he was educated by a tutor. He was a rapid learner and by the age of fourteen was fluent in French , Greek , Italian , and Latin as well as his native English . He became a great admirer of the Romantic poets, especially Shelley . In imitation of the latter, he briefly became an Atheist and a Vegetarian , but in later life he looked back on this as a passing phase. At age sixteen he attended University College, London , but dropped out after his first year. Through his mother he inherited some musical talent, and composed settings, for various songs. His grandmother also was of Creole blood. Thomas Chase wrote of Browning's skin complexion as dark, and his hair as curly. The same went for his Jamaica n English born wife, Elizabeth Barrett. PUBLICATION In May 1833, Browning's '''' was published Anonymously by Saunders And Otley , in many ways a vanity publication financed by his family, and this marked the beginning of his career as a poet. A lengthy Confession al Poem , it was intended by its young author to be merely one of a series of works produced by various fictitious versions of himself (the poet, the composer, etc.), but Browning abandoned the larger project. He was much embarrassed by ''Pauline'' in later life, contributing a somewhat contrite preface to the 1868 edition of his '' Collected Poems '' asking for his readers' indulgence when reading what in his eyes was practically a piece of Juvenilia , before undertaking extensive revisions to the poem in time for the 1888 edition, with the remark "twenty years' endurance of an eyesore seems long enough". In 1834, he paid his first visit to Italy, in which so much of his future life was to be passed. In 1835, Browning wrote the lengthy dramatic poem '''', a very lengthy poem in Blank Verse on the subject of an obscure feud in Medieval North ern Italy . Full of obscure references and verbose language, the poem became something of a scapegoat for critics' anti-Browning sentiments, and the young poet was made an object of derision and shunned by many of the literati. The effect on Browning's career was catastrophic, and he would not recover his good public standing — and the good sales that accompanied it — until the publication of '' The Ring And The Book '' nearly thirty years later. Throughout the early 1840s he continued to publish volumes of Play s and shorter poems, under the general series title '' Bells And Pomegranates ''. Although the plays, with the exception of '' Pippa Passes '' — in many ways more of a dramatic poem than an actual play — are almost entirely forgotten, the volumes of poetry ('' Dramatic Lyrics '', first published in 1842, and 1845's '' Dramatic Romances And Lyrics '') are often considered to be among the poet's best work, containing many of his most well-known poems. Though much admired now, the volumes were largely ignored at the time in the wake of the ''Sordello'' debacle. MARRIAGE In early 1845, Browning began corresponding with Elizabeth Barrett , a semi-invalid, and the two conducted a secret courtship away from the eyes of her domineering father before marrying in secret in 1846 - a union of ideal happiness - and eloping to Italy. Their son, the painter and critic Robert Wiedemann Browning , known to the family as "Pen", was born in Florence in 1849. The Brownings continued to write and publish poetry from their Italian home throughout the 1850s, with Elizabeth far outshadowing Robert in both critical and commercial reception. Robert Browning's first published work since marriage was the lengthy religious piece '' Christmas-Eve And Easter-Day '', published in 1850. '' Men And Women '', a series of fifty dramatic poems recited by fifty different fictional and historical characters, with a fifty-first, "One Word More", featuring Browning himself as the narrator and dedicated to his wife, was published in 1855. ''Men and Women'' — its title taken from a line in his wife's '' Sonnets From The Portuguese '' — is generally considered his most successful collection by modern critics, and many have singled it out as one of the finest books published in Victorian England, but the collection elicited little response when first published and sales remained poor. Following Elizabeth's death in 1861, Browning and his son returned to London, paying, however, frequent visits to Italy. When his first new work in nine years, '' Dramatis Personae '', was published in 1864, Browning's reputation was undergoing a critical and popular re-evaluation; a collected edition of his poetry published the previous year had sold reasonably well, as had a number of volumes of selected poems. ''Dramatis Personae'' was a collection of eighteen poems, many of which were somewhat darker in tone than those found in ''Men and Women'', the central theme again being dramatic poems narrated by historical, literary and fictional characters. The religious controversies of the time, as well as the depiction of marital distress, increasingly came to the fore of Browning's work. ''Dramatis Personae'' was the first volume of Browning poetry to sell well enough to merit a second edition, though sales were still hardly spectacular. His literary status was recognised by the award of an Honor ary fellowship at Balliol College, Oxford in 1867. |
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