Robert Browning

Robert Browning (May 7, 1812 – December 12, 1889) was an English poet and playwright.

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.

Related Topics:
Elizabeth Barrett - 1846 - Robert Wiedemann Browning - Florence - 1849 - 1850s - Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day - 1850 - Men and Women - 1855 - Sonnets from the Portuguese - Victorian

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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 honorary fellowship at Balliol College, Oxford in 1867.

Related Topics:
1861 - Dramatis Personae - 1864 - Honor - Balliol College, Oxford - 1867

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[[Image:Robert Browning skit - Cartoon from Punch magazine - 1891 - Project Gutenberg eText 13994.png|thumbnail|250px|right|True literary exclusiveness

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"Don't you admire Robert Browning as a poet, Mr. Fitzsnook?"

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"I used to, once; but everybody admires him now, dontcherknow - so I've had to give him up!"

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Cartoon from Punch, Vol. 101, October 10, 1891]]

Related Topics:
Punch - October 10 - 1891

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