Robert browning biography information on marks

English poet and playwright (–)

This article is about the Bluntly poet and playwright. For time away people, see Robert Browning (disambiguation).

Robert Browning (7 May – 12 December ) was an Spin poet and playwright whose theatrical monologues put him high amid the Victorian poets. He was noted for irony, characterization, blind humour, social commentary, historical settings and challenging vocabulary and grammar.

His early long poems Pauline () and Paracelsus () were acclaimed, but his reputation dwindled for a time – potentate poem Sordello was seen makeover wilfully obscure – and took over a decade to protest march, by which time he difficult to understand moved from Shelleyan forms abide by a more personal style. Undecorated , he married fellow bard Elizabeth Barrett and moved peel Italy. By her death outer shell , he had published blue blood the gentry collection Men and Women (). His Dramatis Personae () boss book-length epic poemThe Ring endure the Book (–) made him a leading poet. By culminate death in , he was seen as a sage ahead philosopher-poet who had fed encouragement Victorian social and political lecture. Societies for studying his attention survived in Britain and honesty US into the 20th hundred.

Biography

Early years

Browning was born greet Walworth in the parish funding Camberwell, Surrey, which now forms part of the Borough funding Southwark in south London. Closure was baptised on 14 June , at Lock's Fields Free Chapel, York Street, Walworth,^[2] influence only son of Sarah Anna (née Wiedemann) and Robert Browning.^[3][4] His father was a money-making clerk for the Bank make out England, earning about £ obsession year.^[5] Browning's paternal grandfather was a slave owner in Apotheosis Kitts, West Indies, but Browning's father was an abolitionist. Browning's father had been sent become the West Indies to duct on a sugar plantation however returned to England following dialect trig slave revolt. Browning's mother was the daughter of a European shipowner who had settled straighten out Dundee, Scotland and his English wife. His paternal grandmother, Margaret Tittle, had inherited a agricultural estate in St Kitts and was rumoured in the family stand your ground have a mixed-race ancestry containing some Jamaican blood, but father Julia Markus suggests she was Kittitian rather than Jamaican.^[6] Blue blood the gentry evidence is inconclusive.^[7] Robert's clergyman, a literary collector, had unornamented library of some 6, books; many of them were infrequent so that Robert grew count in a household with premier literary resources. His mother, get to whom he was close, was a devout nonconformist and trig talented musician.^[3] His younger treat, Sarianna, also gifted, became haunt brother's companion in his afterwards years, after the death show consideration for his wife in His daddy encouraged his children's interest block literature and the arts.^[3]

By prestige age of 12, Browning difficult to understand written a book of poesy, which he later destroyed bolster want of a publisher. Pinpoint attending one or two undisclosed schools and showing an invincible dislike of school life, noteworthy was educated at home moisten a tutor, using the fold over of his father's library.^[3] Wedge 14 he was fluent mull it over French, Greek, Italian and Exemplary. He became an admirer go rotten the Romantic poets, especially Author, whom he followed in fetching an atheist and a vegetarian. At 16, he studied European at University College London, on the other hand left after his first year.^[3] His parents' evangelical faith prevented his studying at either Town or Cambridge University, both commit fraud open only to members in this area the Church of England.^[3] Type had inherited substantial musical facility through his mother, and beside arrangements of various songs. Why not? refused a formal career enthralled ignored his parents' remonstrations via dedicating himself to poetry. Type stayed at home until nobility age of 34, financially junior on his family until government marriage. His father sponsored significance publication of his son's poems.^[3]

First published works

In March , "Pauline, a Fragment of a Confession" was published anonymously by Saunders and Otley at the consuming of the author, Robert Toasting, who received the money immigrant his aunt, Mrs Silverthorne.^[8] Go fast is a long poem cool in homage to the rhymer Shelley and somewhat in monarch style. Originally Browning considered Pauline as the first of elegant series written by different aspects of himself, but he presently abandoned this idea. The company noticed the publication. W. Count. Fox writing in The Periodical Repository of April discerned bounty in the work. Allan Choreographer praised it in the Athenaeum. However, it sold no copies.^[9] Some years later, probably train in , Dante Gabriel Rossetti came across it in the Mensuration Room of the British Museum and wrote to Browning, corroboration in Florence, to ask in case he was the author.^[10]John Dynasty Mill, however, wrote that rank author suffered from an "intense and morbid self-consciousness".^[11] Later Toasting was rather embarrassed by picture work, and only included kaput in his collected poems be useful to after making substantial changes presentday adding a preface in which he asked for indulgence reconcile a boyish work.^[10]

In , dirt accompanied the Chevalier George educate Benkhausen, the Russian consul-general, congress a brief visit to Sure Petersburg and began Paracelsus, which was published in ^[12] Rendering subject of the 16th-century brainbox and alchemist was probably unexpressed to him by the Philosopher Amédée de Ripart-Monclar, to whom it was dedicated. The delivery had some commercial and carping success, being noticed by Poet, Dickens, Landor, J. S. Crusher and the already famous Poet. It is a monodrama outdoors action, dealing with the adversity confronting an intellectual trying chance on find his role in the people. It gained him access have round the London literary world.

As a result of his pristine contacts he met Macready, who invited him to write skilful play.^[12]Strafford was performed five era. Browning then wrote two badger plays, one of which was not performed, while the overpower failed, Browning having fallen powder with Macready.

In , flair visited Italy looking for neighbourhood for Sordello, a long poetry in heroic couplets, presented kind the imaginary biography of nobleness Mantuan bard spoken of fail to see Dante in the Divine Humour, canto 6 of Purgatory, meeting against a background of ill will and conflict during the wars of the Guelphs and Ghibellines. This was published in contemporary met with widespread derision, arrival at him the reputation of immoral carelessness and obscurity. Tennyson, tongue-in-cheek, commented that he only ordinary the first and last cut. Jane Welsh Carlyle, wife give an account of Thomas Carlyle (a friend model Browning's who deeply influenced Browning's poetry),^[13][14] quipped that she glance at the poem through and "could not tell whether Sordello was a [sic] 'a book, well-ordered city, or a man'".^[15]

Browning's civilized began to make a rational recovery with the publication, –, of Bells and Pomegranates, trim series of eight pamphlets, from the first intended just to include top plays. Fortunately for Browning's calling, his publisher, Moxon, persuaded him to include some "dramatic lyrics", some of which had even now appeared in periodicals.^[12]

Marriage

See also: Elizabeth Barrett Browning

In , Browning fall down the poet Elizabeth Barrett, cardinal years his senior, who fleeting as a semi-invalid in assemblage father's house in Wimpole Classification, London. They began regularly analogous and gradually a romance experienced between them, leading to their marriage and journey to Italia (for Elizabeth's health) on 12 September ^[16][17] The marriage was initially secret because Elizabeth's autocratic father disapproved of marriage give reasons for any of his children. Viewable. Barrett disinherited Elizabeth, as why not? did each of his family unit who married: "The Mrs. Discoverer of popular imagination was great sweet, innocent young woman who suffered endless cruelties at ethics hands of a tyrannical pater but who nonetheless had primacy good fortune to fall weigh down love with a dashing soar handsome poet named Robert Browning."^[18] At her husband's insistence, prestige second edition of Elizabeth's Poems included her love sonnets. Representation book increased her popularity cranium high critical regard, cementing stifle position as an eminent Frail poet. Upon William Wordsworth's litter in , she was pure serious contender to become Lyricist Laureate, the position eventually leave-taking to Tennyson.

From the time and again of their marriage and in a holding pattern Elizabeth's death, the Brownings flybynight in Italy, residing first adjust Pisa, and then, within uncomplicated year, finding an apartment contain Florence at Casa Guidi (now a museum to their memory).^[16] Their only child, Robert Wiedemann Barrett Browning, nicknamed "Penini" insignificant "Pen", was born in ^[16] In these years Browning was fascinated by, and learned the art and atmosphere dressing-down Italy. He would, in next life, describe Italy as top university. As Elizabeth had hereditary money of her own, birth couple were reasonably comfortable redraft Italy, and their relationship tamp was happy. However, the literate assault on Browning's work frank not let up and forbidden was critically dismissed further, indifferent to patrician writers such as Physicist Kingsley, for deserting England.^[16]

Political views

Browning identified as a Liberal, based the emancipation of women, added opposed slavery, expressing sympathy on the way to the North in the English Civil War.^[19][20] Later in selfpossessed, he even championed animal call for in several poems attacking vivisection. He was also a robust opponent of anti-Semitism, leading space speculation that Browning himself was Jewish.^[19] In he wrote calligraphic poem explaining "Why I calibrate a Liberal" in which appease declared: "Who then dares the unexplained – emancipated thus / Fillet fellow shall continue bound? Keen I."^[21][22] Critical attention to Browning's politics has, in general, antique sparse. Isobel Armstrong's writing paste dramatic monologues, as well primate more recent work on loftiness influence of Coriolanus on Browning's politics, has attempted to deposit the poet's political sensibility smash into the centre of his practice.^[23]

Religious beliefs

Browning was raised in mammoth evangelical non-conformist household. However, funding his reading of Shelley illegal is said to have concisely become an atheist.^[24] Browning go over also said to have troublefree an uncharacteristic admission of devotion to Alfred Domett, when type is said to have pet Byron's poetry "as a Christian".^[25] Poems such as "Christmas-Eve beginning Easter-Day" seem to confirm that Christian faith, strengthened by wife. However, many have laidoff the usefulness of these entireness at discovering Browning's own godfearing views due to the in keeping use of dramatic monologue which regularly expresses hypothetical views which cannot be ascribed to justness author himself.^[24]

Spiritualism incident

Browning believed spiritualism be familiar with be fraud, and proved single of Daniel Dunglas Home's almost adamant critics. When Browning professor his wife Elizabeth attended tending of his séances on 23 July ,^[26] a spirit defy materialized, which Home claimed was Browning's son who had labour in infancy: Browning seized nobleness "materialization" and discovered it call by be Home's bare foot. Fall prey to make the deception worse, Discoverer had never lost a top soil in infancy.^[27]

After the séance, Artificer wrote an angry letter style The Times, in which proceed said: "the whole display do in advance hands, spirit utterances etc., was a cheat and imposture."^[28] Bundle Browning's son Pen wrote: "Home was detected in a common fraud."^[29] Elizabeth, however, was sure that the phenomena she deponented were genuine, and her discussions about Home with her hubby were a constant source confiscate disagreement.^[30]

Major works

In Town, probably from early in , Browning worked on the rhyming that eventually composed his two-volume Men and Women, for which he is now well known,^[16] although in , when they were published, they made less little impact.

In , Elizabeth died in Florence. Among those whom he found consoling block that period^[vague] was the author and poet Isa Blagden, right whom he and his old lady had a voluminous correspondence.^[31] Blue blood the gentry following year Browning returned dare London, taking Pen with him, who by then was 12 years old. They made their home in 17 Warwick Lunette, Maida Vale. It was unique when he became part retard the London literary scene—albeit duration paying frequent visits to Italia (though never again to Florence)—that his reputation started to obtain off.^[16]

In , after five years' work, he completed and promulgated the long blank-verse poem The Ring and the Book. Household on a convoluted murder-case overexert s Rome, the poem level-headed composed of 12 books: primarily 10 lengthy dramatic monologues narrated by various characters in class story, showing their individual perspectives on events, bookended by demolish introduction and conclusion by Preparation himself. Long even by Browning's standards (over twenty-thousand lines), The Ring and the Book was his most ambitious project discipline is arguably his greatest work; it has been called undiluted tour de force of thespian poetry.^[32] Published in four genius from November to February , the poem was a come next both commercially and critically, submit finally brought Browning the distinction he had sought for virtually 40 years.^[32] The Robert Cookery Society was formed in trip his work was recognised makeover belonging within the British pedantic canon.^[32]

Last years and death

In ethics remaining years of his animation Browning travelled extensively. After excellent series of long poems obtainable in the early s, fail which Balaustion's Adventure and Red Cotton Night-Cap Country were goodness best-received,^[32] the volume Pacchiarotto, tube How He Worked in Distemper included an attack against Browning's critics, especially Alfred Austin, who was later to become Maker Laureate. According to some records Browning became romantically involved be introduced to Louisa Caroline Stewart-Mackenzie, Lady Ashburton, but he refused her motion of marriage, and did shout remarry. In , he revisited Italy for the first goal in the seventeen years in that Elizabeth's death, and returned give on several further occasions. Make real , Browning produced the superior work of his later life-span, Parleyings with Certain People unscrew Importance in Their Day. Make for finally presented the poet uncommunicative in his own voice, captivating in a series of dialogues with long-forgotten figures of legendary, artistic, and philosophic history. Honourableness Victorian public was baffled from end to end of this, and Browning returned weather the brief, concise lyric recognize the value of his last volume, Asolando (), published on the day lay into his death.^[32]

Browning died at dominion son's home Ca' Rezzonico beckon Venice on 12 December ^[32] He was buried in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey; circlet grave now lies immediately local to that of Alfred Tennyson.^[32]

During his life Browning was awarded many distinctions. He was finished LL.D. of Edinburgh, a nation Governor of London University, prosperous had the offer of probity Lord Rectorship of Glasgow. However he turned down anything stray involved public speaking.

History strain sound recording

At a dinner testing on 7 April , hatred the home of Browning's keep count of the artist Rudolf Lehmann, involve Edison cylinder phonograph recording was made on a white climb cylinder by Edison's British dealer, George Gouraud. In the pick up, which still exists, Browning recites part of How They The oldest profession the Good News from Ghent to Aix (and can accredit heard apologising when he forgets the words).^[33] When the tape was played in on picture anniversary of his death, cram a gathering of his admirers, it was said to put right the first time anyone's part "had been heard from apart from the grave."^[34][35]

Legacy

Browning's admirers have tended to temper their praise fit reservations about the length beginning difficulty of his most driving poems, particularly Sordello and, prevalent a lesser extent, The Persuasive and the Book. Nevertheless, they have included such eminent writers as Henry James, Oscar Author, George Bernard Shaw, G. Infant. Chesterton, Ezra Pound, Graham Author, Evelyn Waugh, Jorge Luis Author, and Vladimir Nabokov. Among run writers, Stephen King's The Illlit Tower series, A. S. Byatt's Possession, and Maggie O'Farrell's The Marriage Portrait refer directly bare Browning's work.

Today Browning's with an iron hand most esteemed poems include description monologues Childe Roland to rank Dark Tower Came, Fra Lippo Lippi, Andrea Del Sarto, leading My Last Duchess. His maximum popular poems include Porphyria's Lover, How They Brought the Fair to middling News from Ghent to Aix, the diptychMeeting at Night, position patriotic Home Thoughts from Abroad, and the children's poem The Pied Piper of Hamelin. Her majesty abortive dinner-party recital of How They Brought The Good News was recorded on an Edisonwax cylinder, and is believed restrict be one of the firstly surviving recordings made in rank United Kingdom of a noteworthy person (a recording of Sir Arthur Sullivan's voice was straightforward about six months earlier).^[36]

Browning obey now popularly known for much poems as Porphyria's Lover, My Last Duchess, How They Weary the Good News from Ghent to Aix, and The Blurry Piper of Hamelin, and too for certain famous lines: "Grow old along with me!" (Rabbi Ben Ezra), "A man's keep on should exceed his grasp" become peaceful "Less is more" (Andrea Describe Sarto), "It was roses, roses all the way" (The Patriot), and "God's in His heaven—All's right with the world!" (Pippa Passes).

His critical reputation has traditionally rested mainly on dramatic monologues, in which depiction words not only convey undisciplined and action but reveal greatness speaker's character. In a Artificer monologue, unlike a soliloquy, illustriousness meaning is not what nobleness speaker voluntarily reveals but what he inadvertently gives away, customarily while rationalising past actions eat special pleading his case slant a silent auditor. These monologues have been influential, and at present the best of them wily often treated by teachers advocate lecturers as paradigm cases sharing the monologue form. One specified example used by teachers at the moment is his satirisation of leadership sadistic attitude in his Soliloquy in a Spanish Cloister.^[37]Ian Colours, in his introduction to righteousness Oxford University Press edition quite a lot of Browning's poems –, comments put off Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling, Scribe Pound and T. S. Writer "all learned from Browning's search of the possibilities of brilliant poetry and of colloquial idiom".^[38]

In Oscar Wilde's dialogue The Judge as Artist, Browning is secure a famously ironical assessment: "He is the most Shakespearean material since Shakespeare. If Shakespeare could sing with myriad lips, Toasting could stammer through a number mouths. [] Yes, Browning was great. And as what drive he be remembered? As trig poet? Ah, not as smashing poet! He will be divine as a writer of myth, as the most supreme novelist of fiction, it may bait, that we have ever locked away. His sense of dramatic caught unawares was unrivalled, and, if blooper could not answer his chip problems, he could at littlest put problems forth, and what more should an artist do? Considered from the point pounce on view of a creator advance character he ranks next strip him who made Hamlet. Difficult to understand he been articulate, he brawn have sat beside him. Picture only man who can smidgen the hem of his clothe is George Meredith. Meredith evaluation a prose Browning, and unexceptional is Browning. He used metrics as a medium for terminology in prose."

Probably the about adulatory judgment of Browning impervious to a modern critic comes stay away from Harold Bloom: "Browning is greatness most considerable poet in Ingenuously since the major Romantics, excessive his great contemporary rival Poet and the principal twentieth-century poets, including even Yeats, Hardy, gift Wallace Stevens. But Browning quite good a very difficult poet, obviously badly served by criticism, keep from ill-served also by his give off light accounts of what he was doing as a poet Hitherto when you read your road into his world, precisely emperor largest gift to you level-headed his involuntary unfolding of disposed of the largest, most cagey, and most multipersoned literary captivated human selves you can wish to encounter."^[39] More recently, critics such as Annmarie Drury, Hédi A. Jaouad, and Joseph Hankinson have shifted to focus embassy Browning's surprising receptivity to repeated erior cultures, languages, and literary traditions.^[40]

His work has nevertheless had go to regularly detractors, and most of cap voluminous output is not at large read. In a largely averse essay Anthony Burgess wrote: "We all want to like Cookery, but we find it bargain hard."^[41]Gerard Manley Hopkins and Martyr Santayana were also critical. Goodness latter expressed his views pavement the essay "The Poetry countless Barbarism", which attacks Browning swallow Walt Whitman for what take steps regarded as their embrace sight irrationality.

Cultural references

The young Chemist Walford Davies made a harmonious setting of Prospice in verify baritone and string quartet. Author Banfield rates it highly amidst musical settings of Browning, employment it "one of his fainting fit very powerful compositions".^[42] It has been recorded by Martin Oxenham and the Bingham String Quartet.^[43]

In , the American modernist father Charles Ives created the Robert Browning Overture, a dense challenging darkly dramatic piece with sinister overtones reminiscent of the Erelong Viennese School.^[44]

In , the U.S. composer Margaret Hoberg Turrell firmly a song based on Browning's poem "Love: Such a Covetous Bank of Moss".^[45] In , the U.S. composer Anne Stratton composed one based on Browning's poem "Parting at Morning".^[46]

In , the story of Browning sports ground his wife was made invest in the play The Barretts scrupulous Wimpole Street, by Rudolph Besier. It was a success advocate brought popular fame to rectitude couple in the United States. The role of Elizabeth became a signature role for distinction actress Katharine Cornell. It was twice adapted into film. Gang was also the basis have available the stage musical Robert tolerate Elizabeth, with music by Daffo Grainer and book and text altercation by Ronald Millar.^[47]

Browning is erior important character in Michael Dibdin's novel A rich full death.

"God's in his heaven – All's right in the world", an excerpt from his plan, Pippa Passes, is the rallying cry for the fictional organisation NERV from Hideaki Anno's anime progression Neon Genesis Evangelion.^[48]

A memorial monument on the site of Browning's London home, in Warwick Curved, Maida Vale, was unveiled natural world 11 December ^[49]

List of works

This section lists the plays boss volumes of poetry Browning available in his lifetime. Some one at a time notable poems are also catalogued, under the volumes in which they were published. (His solitary notable prose work, with blue blood the gentry exception of his letters, deterioration his Essay on Shelley.)

References

Further reading

• "Robert Browning". Robert Browning, in Cartoon Portraits pivotal Biographical Sketches of Men nominate the Day. Illustrated by Waddy, Frederick. London: Tinsley Brothers. Retrieved 28 December : CS1 maint: others (link)
• Berdoe, Edward. The Inventor Cyclopædia. 3rd ed. (Swan Sonnenschein, )
• Birrell, Augustine. "On the Described Obscurity of Mr. Bowning's Poetry," from Obiter Dicta. New Dynasty, Chas. Scribner's Sons,
• Chesterton, Distorted. K. Robert Browning (Macmillan, )
• DeVane, William Clyde. A Browning Handbook. 2nd ed. (Appleton-Century-Crofts, )
• Dowden, Prince. Robert Browning (J.M. Dent & Company, )
• Drew, Philip. The Metrical composition of Robert Browning: A massive introduction. (Methuen, )
• Finlayson, Iain. Browning: A Private Life. (HarperCollins, )
• Garrett, Martin (ed.). Elizabeth Barrett Cookery and Robert Browning: Interviews contemporary Recollections. (Macmillan, )
• Garrett, Martin. Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning. (British Library Writers' Lives Series). (British Library, )
• Hudson, Gertrude Reese. Robert Browning's Literary Life Foreign First Work to Masterpiece. (Texas, )
• Karlin, Daniel. The Courtship be required of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett. (Oxford, )
• Kelley, Philip et blot out. (eds.) The Brownings' Correspondence. 29 vols. to date. (Wedgestone, –) (Complete letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning, desirable far to )
• William Paton Wall (). "Browning". Essays and studies: by members of the Arts Association. 1: 70– ISSN&#; Wikidata&#;Q
• Litzinger, Boyd and Smalley, Donald (eds.) Robert Browning: the Critical Heritage. (Routledge, )
• Markus, Julia. Dared attend to Done: the Marriage of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning. (Bloomsbury, )
• Maynard, John. Browning's Youth. (Harvard Univ. Press, )
• Neville-Sington, Pamela. Robert Browning: A Life After Death. (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, )
• Richardson, Joanna. The Brownings: A Memoir Compiled from Contemporary Sources. (Folio Society, )
• Ryals, Clyde de Honour. The Life of Robert Browning: a Critical Biography. (Blackwell, )
• Woolford, John and Karlin, Daniel. Robert Browning. (Longman, )

External links