After reading Elizabeth Barrett's flattering reference to him in her Poems, Browning wrote to her in January At that time, Barrett was an invalid confined to her room by a nervous disorder. The two became frequent correspondents nonetheless, and on May 20, , Browning made his first personal visit. With his constant urging, she gained steadily in strength, hope, and will until she agreed to a secret marriage on September 12, Such secrecy was necessary because Barrett's father had forbidden all of his children to marry.
Shortly after their marriage, the Brownings left London for Italy, and they made Casa Guidi in Florence their home from until In Browning published Men and Women, a collection of fifty-one poems. Though the volume contained many of the dramatic monologues that are best known and loved by modern readers, it was not popular with Browning's peers. But it did receive several favorable critical reviews. After gradually declining in health for several years, Elizabeth Browning died on June 29, Browning found that he could no longer remain in Florence because of the memories it brought forth.
He resolved to "go to England, and live and work and write. Though some of the dramatic monologues in the collection are complex and difficult or overlong, this was the first of Browning's works to become popular with the general reading public.
His popularity increased with the publication of The Ring and the Book in — This long poem is based on a murder and subsequent trial in Rome, Italy, in In a Florentine bookstall Browning had found an "old Yellow Book" that contained records of these events.
The poem is composed of twelve dramatic monologues, in which the major characters give their interpretations of the crime. The accounts contradict each other, but eventually the truth emerges from behind the tangled web of lies and excuses. The Ring and the Book was enthusiastically received by the public, and Browning became an important figure in London society.
He was a frequent guest at dinners, concerts, and receptions. He then underwent rigors of learning drawing, music, and dancing by several tutors for two years. He was also inspired by the works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. So, he turned toward poetry at the age of twelve. That is why he received less formal education and developed his literary ideas largely at home under the supervision of his parents.
Despite this secluded development, he won an honorary Doctorate of Civil Law from Oxford University in Robert met Elizabeth Barrett in London, in They started corresponding and gradually discovered their love for each other. Even the queen was impressed by the poet's new reputation, inviting him to an audience in March along with Carlyle and two other eminent men.
About the same time Browning also received and declined an invitation to become lord rector of St Andrews University. But the pleasure in public acclaim was lessened when he seems to have learned of his son's sexual activities in Brittany the previous summer.
And at about this time he became seriously ill and for several months remained housebound. During summer , with Browning unable to enjoy his usual holiday in Brittany, he, Sarianna , and Pen joined the Storys in Scotland, where he had never been before.
Although he had earlier refused such an invitation, Browning , along with the others, felt compelled by her insistence to accept the invitation. Some days after they arrived, Lady Ashburton apparently suggested that since both he and she were widowed and struggling to bring up a child, their marriage might be felicitous.
Browning was politely evasive, and seems to have defused the situation, for when he and his party left, everyone was cheerful. Browning and the Storys went on to visit their friends George and Rosalind Howard later earl and countess of Carlisle at their castle in Cumberland. There the Storys' year-old unmarried daughter, Edith Edy or Edie , confided to her hostess that Lady Ashburton had declared her love for the poet, that Browning had asked Edie's advice, and that she had advised him that it was not right to marry a woman simply for her position and his son's sake.
Edie further reported that a letter had come from Lady Ashburton wishing to settle the matter and that Browning had replied saying no. Edie also claimed that Browning was in love with her and was forcing his attentions on her, but Rosalind Howard did not believe her on this point, and assumed that the passion she ascribed to the poet was probably Edie's own for him.
Browning returned to London in September and for the next seven or eight months was often away from Warwick Crescent, visiting the country houses of the great and famous, and visiting Pen at Christ Church, Oxford, where he had arranged for his admission, believing it to be easier than Balliol. In June Pen failed his examinations and was forced to leave Christ Church.
Browning became disconsolate and angry with his son not only for his academic failures but also for his spendthrift nature and idleness.
In summer Browning and Pen set off for another holiday in Scotland. Pen had visited Lady Ashburton and her daughter earlier in the year at their home in the south, and perhaps because of this, they again visited Loch Luichart. Lady Ashburton raised the issue of marriage once more, and Browning told her that his heart lay buried in Florence and any attractiveness of marriage lay in its advantage to Pen.
Browning left the next day, realizing that her vanity was wounded. She nevertheless wrote to him in derogatory language, he reported to a friend, and she also told others that he had ill-treated her. Thereafter he met her only on large social occasions and viewed her as contemptible and unworthy of conversation. In spring Browning began composing a poem published in August of the same year: Balaustion's Adventure: Including a Transcript from Euripides.
The greater part of the poem is the young Balaustion's account of the performance of the first extant drama by Euripides , the Alcestis of bc. Elizabeth Barrett Browning had admired Euripides , and the motto of the poem comes from her Wine of Cyprus The poem is a modern adaptation, rather than a strict translation, forming what Browning called a ' transcript '—scenes are shortened and deleted, the Chorus's role is reduced, and the descriptions and actions of the main characters are altered.
The general movement of the play differs from that of the original, with Balaustion's interpretation shoring up her main concern of salvation through love and art. Her account interweaves her commentary on the characters with Euripides dramatic colloquies, so that Admetus learns the meaning of love and loss, while Heracles is Christianized into a god-man devoted to relieving the sufferings of others.
Some critics feel that the poem has autobiographical elements, with the portraits of Alcestis and Admetus ' affected by points of resemblance to Mrs Browning and the poet himself ' Poems , 1. Admetus, for instance, is insistent that he will not remarry, and this emphasis may well have derived from Browning's recent experience with Lady Ashburton. In the epilogue Balaustion is revealed as the mask of the poet, who, quoting from his late wife and still smarting from earlier critical neglect, nevertheless asserts his self-confidence by asking in the final line ' Why crown whom Zeus has crowned in soul before?
While in Scotland, Browning began to write a poem conceived of in rough draft in Rome in Although he had never shared his wife's enthusiasm for the emperor, Browning had on occasion seen some good in him. In the poem, a long monologue, he addresses the problem of why people with good intentions fail to pursue them, in the end showing that this person who claims to be a man of action is merely an indecisive homme sensuel.
The poem sold well initially, copies in five days, but sales soon tailed off. Reviewers were also baffled by a work which asks the reader to be both sympathetic and judgemental of the monologuist, and although Browning himself thought it to be ' a sample of my very best work ' Poems , 1. Soon after its publication Browning began another poem dealing with the same issue: good intentions unfulfilled. Fifine at the Fair is composed of rhymed alexandrines, with a prologue and epilogue of lines.
Dealing with conjugal inconstancy, Fifine at the Fair may touch on Browning's qualms concerning disloyalty to his dead wife for even briefly considering Lady Ashburton's proposal of marriage, and on his father's disloyalty to his mother in proposing to marry another woman.
The main part of the poem is an almost cinematic monologue of shifting perspectives in time and space, but its narrative hardly matters. What is significant is the internal action, structured on the Browning -esque interplay between the wish for constancy and law, on the one hand, and the desire for change and lawlessness, on the other.
Browning expected that most readers would find the poem difficult to understand—in April he said that the poem was ' the most metaphysical and boldest he had written since Sordello ', and that he ' was very doubtful to its reception ' Poems , 2.
Readers did indeed have difficulty with it. As the Westminster Review put it on 1 October ' for the ordinary reader it might just as well have been written in Sanscrit '. One of the saddest events resulting from its publication was the rupture of friendship with Dante Gabriel Rossetti that it caused. Browning had sent him a copy, and the poem enraged Rossetti for what he saw as its satire of him and his poetry. It is likely that Browning had used the poem as a source, and Rossetti saw him as part of the conspiracy that he felt was being ranged against the pre-Raphaelites at this time.
Their friendship never recovered. Browning's next work was based on a story he had heard concerning the suicide of a man in Calvados and involving love, sex, religion, and social roles. As with ' the Old Yellow Book ', the poet threw himself imaginatively into the situation, so fascinated that he asked for legal documents and collected accounts of people in the neighbourhood to try to come up with its truth.
Published in May , Red Cotton Night-Cap Country is a first-person narrative in four parts and lines of blank verse. Its internal auditor was Anne Thackeray , daughter of the novelist, who had been staying at Lion, about 5 miles from the scene of the suicide. As the poem states, she referred to the region as ' White Cotton Night-Cap Country ', and Browning changed the ' white ' to ' red ' in part to point up the bloody nature of his tale.
Anne Thackeray was not entirely happy with her association with the poem, particularly when hostile reviews of it appeared. Readers had problems with the sordid nature of the story, and with ' its grotesque blend of savage humour, whimsical humour and intense seriousness ' Poems , 2.
It was generally disliked, but Browning seems to have borne up well to the criticism, and probably as a diversion he made another translation of Euripides , this time of Heracles. Laying aside his translation, Browning turned to Aristophanes , who had denigrated Euripides. In the s there was general hostility to Euripides , stimulated by German criticism claiming that the playwright had destroyed classical Greek poetry.
Browning wanted to prove otherwise, and during his annual summer holiday in France during he was deeply involved in a study of Greek books, especially the works of Aristophanes. Over the next year he read widely about Greek dramatists, including arcane scholarship. In mid-August he began composing the material surrounding Heracles and completed it the following November. Aristophanes' Apology , composed of lines, is the third longest of Browning's works.
It acts as a kind of sequel to Balaustion's Adventure , and is formally complex. It progresses by statement and counterstatement, and is divided into three different modes—the apology of Aristophanes , Balaustion's admonishment of him, and a translation of Heracles —with a prologue and a conclusion.
The poem is Browning's boldest experiment with the dramatic monologue, and it concludes that all individual points of view are in some way or other deficient, and that tensions of opposites should be recognized and accepted, a paradox joyfully expressed by Balaustion at the close of her monologue when she sings:.
When published on 15 April , Aristophanes' Apology proved again a bewildering work to most of the reviewers. Copies of the first edition were still being sold after the poet's death. Browning's next work is formally entirely different from anything he had previously published. It is like Sordello in being a dramatic poem in which the narrator sets the scene and ends the action.
It is also like The Ring and the Book , in that the point of departure is a text; but here the text is not one interpreted by the narrator or the actors, but is a text written by the characters themselves and inscribed into an album. The Inn Album was published in autumn Although copies of the copy print run were sold within three weeks of publication, no second edition was called for.
Reviews, including that by Henry James in The Nation 20 January , were generally negative, although Swinburne praised the poem. Browning was irate with the criticisms, as they yet again featured the old charge of obscurity. Browning's next work, Pacchiarotto and how he Worked in Distemper , embodies the poet's discontent with the reviewers and offers a stern warning to all who tried to delve into his private life. In the prologue the speaker lives in a ' house, no eye can probe '.
In 'Of Pacchiarotto' the critics come to the house under the pretence of helping with housekeeping, but bring in filth and are told to stay away. Whether they like him or his house is to Pacchiarotto a matter of supreme indifference, as his only concern is to please the ' Landlord ' to whom he pays rent for the ' freehold '.
The nineteen poems of Pacchiarotto , unsurprisingly, were not cordially received, and Browning claimed that he had written them only to amuse himself at the expense of his critics. Over the previous six years he had written six highly experimental but largely unappreciated long poems totalling about 20, lines. He was at this time willing to relax, and published a volume that was largely a jeu d'esprit.
Browning went on to accept Carlyle's suggestion that he translate the Greek tragedians. He undertook the translation of the Agamemnon of Aeschylus , who in the nineteenth century was generally regarded as an obscure writer, just as Browning himself had come to be. The Agamemnon of Aeschylus Transcribed by Robert Browning , more a transcription than a translation and reading like Greek English, was published in October Browning's next poem was an elegy, La Saisiaz , in memory of Anne Egerton Smith , a close friend who had died in the Jura mountains when she was staying in a chalet there with Browning and Sarianna.
As the speaker works his way through ' facts ' and ' fancies ' about the soul and an afterlife, he expresses belief in his own being, ' soul ', and a power outside and independent of himself—' God '. That these ' facts ' surpass his ability to prove them, in fact:. In The Two Poets of Croisic , the first poet is one who, after writing a poem prophesying an event that comes true, feels himself divinely inspired, gives up poetry, and retires to a secluded life.
The other poet is one who becomes famous when his sister claims authorship of his worthless verse, but who loses fame when he reveals himself to be its writer. From these stories of the two poets, the speaker concludes that fame is dependent on externals, and cannot be a criterion for true value. In other words, the great poet will be one like Robert Browning. Late in summer , still suffering from Anne Egerton Smith's death and upset over the sexual peccadillos of Pen , who had decided to undertake formal training as a painter, Browning , with Sarianna , spent a month in Switzerland before going on to Italy and delighting in Asolo and Venice.
They both liked Venice, with its large English and American community, so much that they returned there in seven autumns over the next eleven years. While on this vacation, Browning wrote several poems that he joined with others to publish as Dramatic Idyls in April The title inevitably forced comparisons with Tennyson's ' idylls ', and Browning defined what he meant by the term in this way in The poems are in rhymed verse, and the metres approximate those of Greek idylls.
Browning was so pleased that the book was well received for the first time since Balaustion's Adventure a second edition was called for , that he wrote another series of poems, and published them as Dramatic Idyls, Second Series June The second series, however, was not as popular as the first, and a second edition was not required.
By Browning had become recognized, along with Tennyson , as one of the greatest poets of the period. He was awarded an LLD degree by Cambridge in , and in summer and autumn a group of his admirers founded the Browning Society. The poet was amazed and elated by this outpouring of support, and he was further delighted and surprised when Browning societies began to spread around the world—there were twenty-two of them within the next three years.
In he was given an honorary DCL at Oxford. In America his reputation spread so that in Chicago, for example, some of his works were printed on railway timetables, and bookstores could not keep up with the demand for copies of his works.
In addition, foreign visitors in London sought glimpses of him as well as autographs. Browning was delighted and, resting on his laurels for the next three years, published nothing. He and Sarianna continued to spend their summers abroad. During the rest of the year he became a strenuous diner-out and attender at all sorts of social functions, dressed so dapperly that he was, according to the weekly World of 7 December , ' as far a dandy as a sensible man can be '. Browning ended his period of printed silence with Jocoseria March Containing ten poems in the mode of the dramatic idylls, all treating the theme of desire, the volume is largely undistinguished, 'Ixion' being the only poem now recognized as worthy of mention.
At the time, however, Jocoseria was well received. A second edition was needed almost immediately, and a third edition was published in Browning himself was not very pleased with this collection, remarking that it had ' had the usual luck of the little-deserving ' Poems , 2.
He was increasingly aware that he was now proclaimed a sage by the Browning societies, and he felt that he must therefore address philosophical and religious issues in a higher way. Ferishtah's Fancies , published in November , contains twelve ' fancies ', analogies and parables of the great theological problems, plus a prologue and epilogue. Each of Ferishtah's theological speculations is followed by a love lyric, thereby indicating that the ' fancies ' of the intellect are authenticated by the ' facts ' of love.
The poem ' is important as a fairly direct statement of the poet's mature religious beliefs … Browning did not pretend that Ferishtah was more than a transparent disguise for himself ' ibid.
The poem sold well—two further editions were needed in Browning apparently began his next poem when he was seventy-three. He worked on it for several years and wanted it to be the summation of his career, so he found the writing difficult. Aiming at a kind of intellectual autobiography told in a conversational style, he designed it to be of epic, encyclopaedic scope. Parleyings with Certain People in their Day was modelled both on Faust and The Divine Comedy , and consists of seven parts with prologue and coda.
This means that there are three points of view to be considered: those of the speaker, the figure from the past, and a contemporary. Further, each parleying poses two basic questions: is life good or bad? Both in its philosophical complexity and daring design, the Parleyings , dedicated to the memory of Joseph Milsand , who had died in September , is the boldest work of Browning's later career. Ranging from classical Greece through the middle ages and the Enlightenment to the later nineteenth century, it deals with the evolution of man's art, thought, morals, and religion.
Most reviewers found the Parleyings bewildering and seemed to share the reviewer's opinion in The Spectator of 5 February that ' Mr. Browning does not condescend more generously to the minds of his readers in age than he did in youth '. No second edition was called for. On 4 October Pen , who had become a somewhat popular artist because of his father's many busy efforts to promote him, married the heiress Fannie Coddington , an American by parentage but English in upbringing and a great admirer of Browning's poetry.
Browning's main business during and was to prepare his collected works, issued in sixteen volumes monthly between April and July He and Sarianna spent three months in Venice in late summer and autumn , where they followed the negotiations that Pen with his wife's financial backing was making to buy and refurbish the baroque Palazzo Rezzonico. Back at De Vere Gardens, Browning continued during winter —9, as when in Venice, to correct proofs of his collected edition.
In July he read in a recently published edition of the deceased Edward FitzGerald's letters a letter derogatory of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Greatly angered, Robert wrote a vituperative sonnet, which was published in The Athenaeum on 13 July.
The poem caused an uproar, and Browning felt that he had humiliated both himself and his dead wife. Although Browning's health had appeared good, during the winter both he and his acquaintances thought him lacking in his usual energy. The FitzGerald incident worsened matters, and he fell ill. But he revived sufficiently to attend some prominent social events, and by September he and Sarianna were on their way to Italy.
They stopped first in Asolo, which stimulated in him a burst of creative energy, and the preparation of a new volume of poems incorporating verse written there. In mid-October he sent off the poems to his publisher and then he and Sarianna went on to Venice to stay with Pen and Fannie in the splendidly restored Palazzo Rezzonico.
Late in October Robert became ill with what he thought was a cold, but which was diagnosed as bronchitis and a weakened heart. As he became worse, friends were notified of his critical condition, which soon became known to the press and aroused the world's curiosity. On 12 December , soon after hearing Pen read to him a telegram from his publisher that the book, published that day, had received highly favourable reviews and was almost sold out, Browning slipped in and out of consciousness and then, about ten o'clock that evening, he died.
Pen had hoped to bury his father alongside his mother in Florence, but was told that the cemetery was closed. A message then came from the dean of Westminster offering burial in the abbey, and it was accepted. Soon thereafter the body was returned to London by train.
After the funeral, Pen and Fannie remained in London until spring to settle the poet's affairs. But the two became frequent correspondents, and on May 20, , Browning made his first personal visit. With his constant urging, she gained steadily in strength, hope, and will until she agreed to a secret marriage on Sept. Such secrecy was necessary because Barrett's father had forbidden all of his children "the iniquity of love affairs. Shortly after their marriage, the Brownings left London for Italy, and they made Casa Guidi in Florence their home from until In Browning published Men and Women, a collection of 51 poems.
Though the volume contained many of the dramatic monologues that are best known and loved by modern readers, it was not popular with Browning's contemporaries. But it did receive several favorable critical reviews and made Browning the idol of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
After gradually declining in health for several years, Elizabeth Browning died on June 29, Browning found that he could no longer remain in Florence because of the memories it evoked. He resolved to "go to England, and live and work and write. Though some of the dramatic monologues in the collection are complex and difficult or overlong, this was the first of Browning's works to be popular with the general reading public.
His popularity increased with the publication of The Ring and the Book in This long poem is based on a murder and subsequent trial in Rome in In a Florentine bookstall Browning had found an "old Yellow Book" that contained records of these events. The poem is composed of 12 dramatic monologues, in which the major characters give their interpretations of the crime. The accounts contradict each other, but eventually the truth emerges from behind the tangled web of deceit and self-justification.
The Ring and the Book was enthusiastically received by the public, and Browning became a prominent figure in London society.
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