robert browning

Robert Browning (1812 - 1889) was an English poet and playwright whose mastery of the dramatic monologue made him one of the foremost Victorian poets. His poems are known for their irony, characterisation, dark humour, social commentary, historical settings, and challenging vocabulary and syntax.

Browning's early career began promisingly, but collapsed. The long poems Pauline (1833) and Paracelsus (1835) received some acclaim, but in 1840 the difficult poem: Sordello, which was seen as wilfully obscure, brought his poetry into disrepute. His reputation took more than a decade to recover, during which time he moved away from the Shelleyan forms of his early period and developed a more personal style.

In 1846 Browning married the older poet Elizabeth Barrett and went to live in Italy. By the time of her death in 1861 he had published the crucial collection Men and Women (1855). The collection Dramatis Personae (1864) and the book-length epic poem The Ring and the Book (1868-1869) followed,…more