Robert Browning

In 1846, he married fellow poet Elizabeth Barrett and moved to Italy. His Dramatis Personae (1864) and book-length epic poem The Ring and the Book (1868–1869) made him a leading poet. Societies for studying his work survived in Britain and the US into the 20th century.

Robert Browning studied at University College London. The recorded working language is English. Employment is recorded with University of Oxford. Works named in the authority record are The Ring and the Book. Work by Robert Browning is recorded in the collections of Minneapolis Institute of Art, Art Institute of Chicago and Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.

• Name — Robert Browning • Born — 7 May 1812 • Birthplace — Camberwell, Surrey, England • Died — 12 December 1889 • Place of death — Venice, Italy • Resting Place — Westminster Abbey • Occupation — Poet • Education — University College London • Movement — Victorian • Children — Robert Barrett ("Pen")

Browning was born in Walworth in the parish of Camberwell, Surrey, which now forms part of the Borough of Southwark in south London. He was baptised on 14 June 1812, at Lock's Fields Independent Chapel, York Street, Walworth, the only son of Sarah Anna (née Wiedemann) and Robert Browning. His father was a well-paid clerk for the Bank of England, earning about £150 per year. Browning's paternal grandfather was a slave owner in Saint Kitts, West Indies, but Browning's father was an abolitionist. Browning's father had been sent to the West Indies to work on a sugar plantation but returned to England following a slave revolt. Browning's mother was the daughter of a German shipowner who had settled in Dundee, Scotland with his Scottish wife. His paternal grandmother, Margaret Tittle, had inherited a plantation in St Kitts and was rumoured in the family to have a mixed-race ancestry including some Jamaican blood, but author Julia Markus suggests she was Kittitian rather than Jamaican. The evidence is inconclusive. Robert's father, a literary collector, had a library of some 6,000 books; many of them were rare so that Robert grew up in a household with significant literary resources. His mother, to whom he was close, was a devout nonconformist and a talented musician. His younger sister, Sarianna, also gifted, became her brother's companion in his later years, after the death of his wife in 1861. His father encouraged his children's interest in literature and the arts. By the age of 12, Browning had written a book of poetry, which he later destroyed for want of a publisher. After attending one or two private schools and showing an insuperable dislike of school life, he was educated at home by a tutor, using the resources of his father's library. By 14 he was fluent in French, Greek, Italian and Latin. He became an admirer of the Romantic poets, especially Shelley, whom he followed in becoming an atheist and a vegetarian. At 16, he studied Greek at University College London, but left after his first year. His parents' evangelical faith prevented his studying at either Oxford or Cambridge University, both then open only to members of the Church of England. He had inherited substantial musical ability through his mother, and composed arrangements of various songs. He refused a formal career and ignored his parents' remonstrations by dedicating himself to poetry. He stayed at home until the age of 34, financially dependent on his family until his marriage. His father sponsored the publication of his son's poems.

• Illustration — Portraits of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning. • Illustration — Clasped Hands of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1853 by Harriet Hosmer. In 1845, Browning met the poet Elizabeth Barrett, six years his senior, who lived as a semi-invalid in her father's house in Wimpole Street, London. They began regularly corresponding and gradually a romance developed between them, leading to their marriage and journey to Italy (for Elizabeth's health) on 12 September 1846. The marriage was initially secret because Elizabeth's domineering father disapproved of marriage for any of his children. Mr. Barrett disinherited Elizabeth, as he did each of his children who married: "The Mrs. Browning of popular imagination was a sweet, innocent young woman who suffered endless cruelties at the hands of a tyrannical papa but who nonetheless had the good fortune to fall in love with a dashing and handsome poet named Robert Browning." At her husband's insistence, the second edition of Elizabeth's Poems included her love sonnets. The book increased her popularity and high critical regard, cementing her position as an eminent Victorian poet. Upon William Wordsworth's death in 1850, she was a serious contender to become Poet Laureate, the position eventually going to Tennyson. From the time of their marriage and until Elizabeth's death, the Brownings lived in Italy, residing first in Pisa, and then, within a year, finding an apartment in Florence at Casa Guidi (now a museum to their memory). Their only child, Robert Wiedemann Barrett Browning, nicknamed "Penini" or "Pen", was born in 1849. In these years Browning was fascinated by, and learned from, the art and atmosphere of Italy. He would, in later life, describe Italy as his university. As Elizabeth had inherited money of her own, the couple were reasonably comfortable in Italy, and their relationship together was happy. However, the literary assault on Browning's work did not let up and he was critically dismissed further, by patrician writers such as Charles Kingsley, for deserting England.

Browning identified as a liberal, supported the emancipation of women, and opposed slavery, expressing sympathy for the North in the American Civil War. Later in life, he even championed animal rights in several poems attacking vivisection. He was also a stalwart opponent of anti-Semitism, leading to speculation that Browning himself was Jewish. In 1877 he wrote a poem explaining "Why I am a Liberal" in which he declared: "Who then dares hold – emancipated thus / His fellow shall continue bound? Not I." Critical attention to Browning's politics has, in general, been sparse. Isobel Armstrong's writing on dramatic monologues, as well as more recent work on the influence of Coriolanus on Browning's politics, has attempted to situate the poet's political sensibility at the centre of his practice.

Browning was raised in an evangelical non-conformist household. However, after his reading of Shelley he is said to have briefly become an atheist. Browning is also said to have made an uncharacteristic admission of faith to Alfred Domett, when he is said to have admired Byron's poetry "as a Christian". Poems such as "Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day" seem to confirm this Christian faith, strengthened by his wife. However, many have dismissed the usefulness of these works at discovering Browning's own religious views due to the consistent use of dramatic monologue which regularly expresses hypothetical views which cannot be ascribed to the author himself.

Browning believed spiritualism to be fraud, and proved one of Daniel Dunglas Home's most adamant critics. When Browning and his wife Elizabeth attended one of his séances on 23 July 1855, a spirit face materialized, which Home claimed was Browning's son who had died in infancy: Browning seized the "materialization" and discovered it to be Home's bare foot. To make the deception worse, Browning had never lost a son in infancy. After the séance, Browning wrote an angry letter to The Times, in which he said: "the whole display of hands, spirit utterances etc., was a cheat and imposture." In 1902 Browning's son Pen wrote: "Home was detected in a vulgar fraud." Elizabeth, however, was convinced that the phenomena she witnessed were genuine, and her discussions about Home with her husband were a constant source of disagreement.

In Florence, probably from early in 1853, Browning worked on the poems that eventually composed his two-volume Men and Women, for which he is now well known, although in 1855, when they were published, they made relatively little impact. In 1861, Elizabeth died in Florence. Among those whom he found consoling in that period was the novelist and poet Isa Blagden, with whom he and his wife had had a voluminous correspondence. The following year Browning returned to London, taking Pen with him, who by then was 12 years old. They made their home in 17 Warwick Crescent, Maida Vale. It was only when he became part of the London literary scene—albeit while paying frequent visits to Italy (though never again to Florence)—that his reputation started to take off. In 1868, after five years' work, he completed and published the long blank-verse poem The Ring and the Book. Based on a convoluted murder-case from 1690s Rome, the poem is composed of 12 books: essentially 10 lengthy dramatic monologues narrated by various characters in the story, showing their individual perspectives on events, bookended by an introduction and conclusion by Browning himself. Long even by Browning's standards (over twenty-thousand lines), The Ring and the Book was his most ambitious project and is arguably his greatest work; it has been called a tour de force of dramatic poetry. Published in four parts from November 1868 to February 1869, the poem was a success both commercially and critically, and finally brought Browning the renown he had sought for nearly 40 years. The Robert Browning Society was formed in 1881 and his work was recognised as belonging within the British literary canon.

• Illustration — Browning after death. • Illustration — 1882 caricature from Punch reading: "The Ring and Bookmaker from Red Cotton Nightcap country" In the remaining years of his life Browning travelled extensively. After a series of long poems published in the early 1870s, of which Balaustion's Adventure and Red Cotton Night-Cap Country were the best-received, the volume Pacchiarotto, and How He Worked in Distemper included an attack against Browning's critics, especially Alfred Austin, who was later to become Poet Laureate. According to some reports Browning became romantically involved with Louisa Caroline Stewart-Mackenzie, Lady Ashburton, but he refused her proposal of marriage, and did not remarry. In 1878, he revisited Italy for the first time in the seventeen years since Elizabeth's death, and returned there on several further occasions. In 1887, Browning produced the major work of his later years, Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in Their Day. It finally presented the poet speaking in his own voice, engaging in a series of dialogues with long-forgotten figures of literary, artistic, and philosophic history. The Victorian public was baffled by this, and Browning returned to the brief, concise lyric for his last volume, Asolando (1889), published on the day of his death. Browning died at his son's home Ca' Rezzonico in Venice on 12 December 1889. He was buried in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey; his grave now lies immediately adjacent to that of Alfred Tennyson. During his life Browning was awarded many distinctions. He was made LL.D. of Edinburgh, a life Governor of London University, and had the offer of the Lord Rectorship of Glasgow. But he turned down anything that involved public speaking.

At a dinner party on 7 April 1889, at the home of Browning's friend the artist Rudolf Lehmann, an Edison cylinder phonograph recording was made on a white wax cylinder by Edison's British representative, George Gouraud. In the recording, which still exists, Browning recites part of How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix (and can be heard apologising when he forgets the words). When the recording was played in 1890 on the anniversary of his death, at a gathering of his admirers, it was said to be the first time anyone's voice "had been heard from beyond the grave."

• Illustration — The Pied Piper leads the children out of Hamelin. Illustration by Kate Greenaway to the Robert Browning version of the tale. This section lists the plays and volumes of poetry Browning published in his lifetime. Some individually notable poems are also listed, under the volumes in which they were published. (His only notable prose work, with the exception of his letters, is his Essay on Shelley.) • Pauline: A Fragment of a Confession (1833) • Paracelsus (1835) • Strafford (play) (1837) • Sordello (1840) • Bells and Pomegranates (1841–46) • Bells and Pomegranates No. I: Pippa Passes (play) (1841) • The Year's at the Spring • Bells and Pomegranates No. II: King Victor and King Charles (play) (1842) • Bells and Pomegranates No. III: Dramatic Lyrics (1842) • Porphyria's Lover • Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister • My Last Duchess • The Pied Piper of Hamelin • Count Gismond • Johannes Agricola in Meditation • Bells and Pomegranates No. IV: The Return of the Druses (play) (1843) • Bells and Pomegranates No. V: A Blot in the 'Scutcheon (play) (1843) • Bells and Pomegranates No. VI: Colombe's Birthday (play) (1844) • Bells and Pomegranates No. VII: Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1845) • The Laboratory • How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix • The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church • The Lost Leader • Home Thoughts from Abroad • Meeting at Night • Bells and Pomegranates No. VIII: Luria and A Soul's Tragedy (plays) (1846) • Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day (1850) • Men and Women (1855) • Evelyn Hope • Love Among the Ruins • A Toccata of Galuppi's • Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came • Fra Lippo Lippi • Andrea Del Sarto • The Patriot • The Last Ride Together(1855) • Memorabilia • Cleon • How It Strikes a Contemporary • The Statue and the Bust • A Grammarian's Funeral • An Epistle Containing the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish, the Arab Physician • Bishop Blougram's Apology • Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha • By the Fire-side • My Star • Dramatis Personae (1864) • Caliban upon Setebos • Rabbi Ben Ezra • Abt Vogler • Mr. Sludge, "The Medium" • Prospice • A Death in the Desert • The Ring and the Book (1868–69) • Balaustion's Adventure (1871) • Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Saviour of Society (1871) • Fifine at the Fair (1872) • Red Cotton Night-Cap Country, or, Turf and Towers (1873) • Aristophanes' Apology (1875) • Thamuris Marching • The Inn Album (1875) • Pacchiarotto, and How He Worked in Distemper (1876) • Numpholeptos • The Agamemnon of Aeschylus (1877) • La Saisiaz and The Two Poets of Croisic (1878) • Dramatic Idyls (1879) • Dramatic Idyls: Second Series (1880) • Pan and Luna • Jocoseria (1883) • Ferishtah's Fancies (1884) • Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in Their Day (1887) • Asolando (1889) • Prologue • Summum Bonum • Bad Dreams III • Flute-Music, with an Accompaniment • Epilogue

The authorities additionally record the headings Robert Barrett Browning and Browning. His recorded language was English. His recorded confession was atheism. He married Elizabeth Barrett Browning. One child is recorded: Robert Barrett Browning.

• Illustration — A memorial plaque for a member of the Voluntary Aid Detachment, engraved with a quotation from the Epilogue to Browning's Asolando. The inscription reads: "In Loving Memory of Louisa A. M. McGrigor Commandant V.A.D. Cornwall 22. Who died on service, March 31, 1917. Erected by her fellow workers in the British Red Cross Society, Women Unionist Association, Boy Scouts, Girl Guides and Friends. One who never turned her back but marched breast forward, Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake." American composer Frances Marion Ralston (1875-1952) used Browning’s text for her song "Rabbi Ben Ezra." French composer Angèle Ravizé (1887-1980) used Browning’s text for her vocal quartet Voici le Printemps. The young Henry Walford Davies made a musical setting of Prospice in 1894 for baritone and string quartet. Stephen Banfield rates it highly among musical settings of Browning, calling it "one of his few very powerful compositions". It has been recorded by Martin Oxenham and the Bingham String Quartet. In 1914, the American modernist composer Charles Ives created the Robert Browning Overture, a dense and darkly dramatic piece with gloomy overtones reminiscent of the Second Viennese School. In 1917, the U.S. composer Margaret Hoberg Turrell composed a song based on Browning's poem "Love: Such a Starved Bank of Moss". In 1920, the U.S. composer Anne Stratton composed one based on Browning's poem "Parting at Morning". Browning's poetry has also been set to music by Morfydd Owen, Amy Beach, and Ned Rorem. In 1930, the story of Browning and his wife was made into the play The Barretts of Wimpole Street, by Rudolph Besier. It was a success and brought popular fame to the couple in the United States. The role of Elizabeth became a signature role for the actress Katharine Cornell. It was twice adapted into film. It was also the basis of the stage musical Robert and Elizabeth, with music by Ron Grainer and book and lyrics by Ronald Millar. Terence Rattigan's play The Browning Version (1948) refers to a translation by the poet Robert Browning of Aeschylus's Agamemnon (1877). It was adapted in two films, one directed by Anthony Asquith in 1951 and the other directed by Mike Figgis in 1994. Browning is an important character in Michael Dibdin's 1986 novel A rich full death. In A.S. Byatt's 1990 novel Possession, the fictional Victorian poet Randolph Henry Ash is loosely based on Robert Browning. Ash writes 19th century dramatic monologues in the style of Browning, and conducts an epistolary courtship with a fictional poet (Christabel LaMotte) that echoes Browning's letters to Elizabeth Barrett. "God's in his heaven – All's right in the world", an excerpt from his poem, "Pippa Passes", is the slogan for the fictional organisation NERV from Hideaki Anno's 1995 anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion. A memorial plaque on the site of Browning's London home, in Warwick Crescent, Maida Vale, was unveiled on 11 December 1993. Aalokam: Ranges of Vision, directed by Abhilash Babu is a 2023 Malayalam-language Indian film and it has six separate chapters and five of them are based on Robert Browning's poems.