Robert Browning (1812-1889) may be best known for his romantic courtship and unusual marriage to fellow poet
Elizabeth Barrett. Browning was not a love poet, though he did write love poetry both before and after he had met Elizabeth Barrett.
His poetic specialization was the dramatic monologue.
Robert Browning was born on May 7, 1812, in Camberwell near London. He was the first child of Robert and Sarah Anna
Browning. His mother was a fervent Evangelical and an accomplished pianist. This faith, which Browning adopted, kept him
out of the more prestigious British universities, which accepted only Anglicans in that period.
Mr. Browning, Robert's father, had angered his own father and renounced a fortune. Browning's grandfather had sent his son to oversee a West Indies sugar plantation, but
young Browning senior was horrified by the institution of slavery. He gave up his prospects and returned home. He become a clerk in
the Bank of England. On this very modest salary he was able to marry, raise a family. Outside his prosaic work, he acquired a library of 6,000
volumes. He was a very well-read man with an excellent imagination and pedagogic skills. He could recreate the siege of Troy with chairs and tables
for the benefit of young Robert.
Much of Robert Browning's education was given at home. He was an extremely bright child. A voracious reader, he
got
through all fifty volumes of the Biographie Universelle, and he had learned Latin, Greek, French and Italian by the time he
was fourteen. Prevented by his faith from studying at Cambridge or Oxford, Robert Browning attended the University of London in 1828, the
very first year it opened. However, Browning was bored with institutionalized education. He left the college to educate
himself through reading in his own way ant at his own pace. His somewhat eccentric but extensive education contributed to the obscurity of
some of his poems. He did not always understand that few people were acquainted with his references and allusions.
Though he was a prolific poet, Browning did not achieve much respect or fame until later life. In the 1830's
and thereafter he tried to write verse drama. Pippa Passes was an example of such verse plays, written in
1841. In it there is a love poem, You'll Love me yet,
that at first glance seems as though it could be about his love for Elizabeth Barrett, perhaps a reply to one of
her early coy Sonnets from the Portuguese,
but it was written written four years before he had met her.
At about
the same time he began to discover that his real talents lay in taking a single character and getting that character to
reveal themselves "unconsciously" as it were in his monologues to the audience. The reviews of Paracelsus (1835) had been
fairly good. However, his long
poem Sordello (1840) was difficult and obscure. The poem was a critical failure. Critics turned against him, and for many years they continued to complain of
the obscurity of even
his shorter and simpler lyrics.
In 1845 Browning became acquainted with the poetry of
Elizabeth Barrett, a recluse and semi-invalid. He found a way to meet her. Despite her illness and shyness, and the
opposition of her tyrannical father, he won her hand by persistence and the two married secretly in September 1846.
To escape the tyrannical Mr. Barrett, the couple eloped to Italy, and lived there happily until Elizabeth died in
1861.
Elizabeth Barrett's love for him was
recorded her famous Sonnets from the Portuguese.
Browning dedicated Men and Women, which contains some of his best poetry to Elizabeth.
Elizabeth Barrett was a far more popular poet than Robert Browning, and their marriage, as well perhaps as her artistic
guidance, helped Browning's career.
The Ring and the Book, a 20,000 word epic, was evidently inspired by Elizabeth Barrett and received her
blessing. Browning dedicated the work to her in the brief poem
O lyric love, half angel and half bird which he
included at the end. The Ring and the Book illustrates Browning's penchant for the obscure and horrific. It was based on
a 1698 murder trial in Rome, supposedly taken from an "old yellow book." The poem was a success and elevated
Browning to the level of "foremost" poet.
It is believed by some that Robert Browning carried on a romance with Lady Ashburton after Elizabeth's
death, though he did not re-marry. In 1878, Browning returned to Italy, ending the long absence from that country after
Elizabeth's death. He returned to Italy subsequently on several occasions.
Although Browning lived and wrote actively for another twenty
years, the late '60s were the peak of his career. Later poems did not generally achieve the success of The Ring and the
Book, though some of them have enjoyed a revival. Men and Women was not understood and appreciated when it was written.
Browning's influence continued to grow, however, and lead to the
founding of the Browning Society in 1881. Browning became the first poet ever to record his poetry in his own voice, as
he made a recording into an Edison recording machine in 1888.
Robert Browning died on May 7, 1889, the same day that the last volume of his verse, Asolando, was
published. He is buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey.
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