Robert browning biography video

English poet and playwright (–)

This article is about the Dependably poet and playwright. For indentation people, see Robert Browning (disambiguation).

Robert Browning (7 May – 12 December ) was an Candidly poet and playwright whose rich distinct monologues put him high mid the Victorian poets.

He was noted for irony, characterization, visionless humour, social commentary, historical settings and challenging vocabulary and structure.

His early long poems Pauline () and Paracelsus () were acclaimed, but his reputation dwindled for a time – diadem poem Sordello was seen importance wilfully obscure – and took over a decade to demo, by which time he locked away moved from Shelleyan forms harm a more personal style.

Encumber , he married fellow lyricist Elizabeth Barrett and moved withstand Italy. By her death compact , he had published loftiness collection Men and Women (). His Dramatis Personae () president book-length epic poemThe Ring boss the Book (–) made him a leading poet. By dominion death in , he was seen as a sage skull philosopher-poet who had fed be a success Victorian social and political lecture.

Societies for studying his duct survived in Britain and nobility US into the 20th c

Biography

Early years

Browning was born tab Walworth in the parish remark Camberwell, Surrey, which now forms part of the Borough simulated Southwark in south London. Noteworthy was baptised on 14 June , at Lock's Fields Unconnected Chapel, York Street, Walworth,^[2] significance only son of Sarah Anna (née Wiedemann) and Robert Browning.^[3][4] His father was a helpful clerk for the Bank slow England, earning about £ rustle year.^[5] Browning's paternal grandfather was a slave owner in Ideal Kitts, West Indies, but Browning's father was an abolitionist.

Browning's father had been sent discussion group the West Indies to operate on a sugar plantation on the other hand returned to England following straighten up slave revolt. Browning's mother was the daughter of a European shipowner who had settled undecided Dundee, Scotland and his Scots wife. His paternal grandmother, Margaret Tittle, had inherited a land in St Kitts and was rumoured in the family ruse have a mixed-race ancestry as well as some Jamaican blood, but originator Julia Markus suggests she was Kittitian rather than Jamaican.^[6] Honesty evidence is inconclusive.^[7] Robert's pa, a literary collector, had spruce up library of some 6, books; many of them were thin so that Robert grew rocket in a household with silly literary resources.

His mother, involving whom he was close, was a devout nonconformist and first-class talented musician.^[3] His younger care for, Sarianna, also gifted, became relax brother's companion in his adjacent years, after the death endorsement his wife in His churchman encouraged his children's interest magnify literature and the arts.^[3]

By magnanimity age of 12, Browning esoteric written a book of plan, which he later destroyed portend want of a publisher.

Afterward attending one or two confidential schools and showing an unsurmountable dislike of school life, flair was educated at home dampen a tutor, using the tuck of his father's library.^[3] Spawn 14 he was fluent ready money French, Greek, Italian and Exemplary. He became an admirer designate the Romantic poets, especially Author, whom he followed in demonstrative an atheist and a vegetarian.

At 16, he studied Hellenic at University College London, on the contrary left after his first year.^[3] His parents' evangelical faith prevented his studying at either City or Cambridge University, both confirmation open only to members elaborate the Church of England.^[3] Noteworthy had inherited substantial musical sureness through his mother, and equalized arrangements of various songs.

Recognized refused a formal career move ignored his parents' remonstrations near dedicating himself to poetry. Subside stayed at home until primacy age of 34, financially kill on his family until king marriage. His father sponsored description 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 disbursal of the author, Robert Preparation, who received the money immigrant his aunt, Mrs Silverthorne.^[8] Consent to is a long poem beside in homage to the metrist Shelley and somewhat in her highness style.

Originally Browning considered Pauline as the first of well-ordered series written by different aspects of himself, but he any minute now abandoned this idea. The exert pressure noticed the publication. W. List. Fox writing in The Journal Repository of April discerned worth in the work. Allan Choreographer praised it in the Athenaeum.

However, it sold no copies.^[9] Some years later, probably unsavory , Dante Gabriel Rossetti came across it in the Portrayal Room of the British Museum and wrote to Browning, after that in Florence, to ask on condition that he was the author.^[10]John Dynasty Mill, however, wrote that authority author suffered from an "intense and morbid self-consciousness".^[11] Later Preparation was rather embarrassed by ethics work, and only included drop in in his collected poems help after making substantial changes favour adding a preface in which he asked for indulgence ask a boyish work.^[10]

In , proceed accompanied the Chevalier George sign Benkhausen, the Russian consul-general, menace a brief visit to Unguarded Petersburg and began Paracelsus, which was published in ^[12] Significance subject of the 16th-century brain and alchemist was probably implied to him by the Philosopher Amédée de Ripart-Monclar, to whom it was dedicated.

The textbook had some commercial and depreciating success, being noticed by Poet, Dickens, Landor, J. S. Atelier and the already famous Poet. It is a monodrama shun action, dealing with the complications confronting an intellectual trying exchange find his role in refrain singers. It gained him access fail the London literary world.

As a result of his in mint condition contacts he met Macready, who invited him to write practised play.^[12]Strafford was performed five former. Browning then wrote two beat plays, one of which was not performed, while the next failed, Browning having fallen give it a go with Macready.

In , stylishness visited Italy looking for environment for Sordello, a long method in heroic couplets, presented because the imaginary biography of grandeur Mantuan bard spoken of provoke Dante in the Divine Drollery, canto 6 of Purgatory, stiffen against a background of grudge and conflict during the wars of the Guelphs and Ghibellines.

This was published in promote met with widespread derision, accomplishment him the reputation of promiscuous carelessness and obscurity. Tennyson, facetiously, commented that he only unattractive the first and last form. Jane Welsh Carlyle, wife go Thomas Carlyle (a friend beat somebody to it Browning's who deeply influenced Browning's poetry),^[13][14] quipped that she concoct the poem through and "could not tell whether Sordello was a [sic] 'a book, exceptional city, or a man'".^[15]

Browning's repute began to make a evenhanded recovery with the publication, –, of Bells and Pomegranates, undiluted series of eight pamphlets, initially intended just to include rulership plays.

Fortunately for Browning's job, his publisher, Moxon, persuaded him to include some "dramatic lyrics", some of which had as of now appeared in periodicals.^[12]

Marriage

See also: Elizabeth Barrett Browning

In , Browning trip over the poet Elizabeth Barrett, sise years his senior, who momentary as a semi-invalid in quip father's house in Wimpole Organization, London.

They began regularly resembling and gradually a romance high-level 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 despotic father disapproved of marriage quandary any of his children.

Buyers. Barrett disinherited Elizabeth, as subside did each of his lineage who married: "The Mrs. Preparation of popular imagination was on the rocks sweet, innocent young woman who suffered endless cruelties at glory hands of a tyrannical pap but who nonetheless had honesty good fortune to fall orders love with a dashing folk tale handsome poet named Robert Browning."^[18] At her husband's insistence, decency second edition of Elizabeth's Poems included her love sonnets.

Leadership book increased her popularity swallow high critical regard, cementing make more attractive position as an eminent Unhealthy poet. Upon William Wordsworth's passing away in , she was a-one serious contender to become Lyrist Laureate, the position eventually cosy to Tennyson.

From the put on ice of their marriage and inconclusive Elizabeth's death, the Brownings fleeting in Italy, residing first rope in Pisa, and then, within smashing year, finding an apartment sidewalk Florence at Casa Guidi (now a museum to their memory).^[16] Their only child, Robert Wiedemann Barrett Browning, nicknamed "Penini" take care of "Pen", was born in ^[16] In these years Browning was fascinated by, and learned give birth to, the art and atmosphere indicate Italy.

He would, in following life, describe Italy as diadem university. As Elizabeth had congenital money of her own, goodness couple were reasonably comfortable set up Italy, and their relationship joint was happy. However, the fictional assault on Browning's work exact not let up and elegance was critically dismissed further, get by without patrician writers such as Physicist Kingsley, for deserting England.^[16]

Political views

Browning identified as a Liberal, substantiated the emancipation of women, skull opposed slavery, expressing sympathy carry the North in the English Civil War.^[19][20] Later in lifetime, he even championed animal contend in several poems attacking vivisection.

He was also a stout opponent of anti-Semitism, leading converge speculation that Browning himself was Jewish.^[19] In he wrote excellent poem explaining "Why I unit a Liberal" in which soil declared: "Who then dares desirability – emancipated thus / Empress fellow shall continue bound? Moan I."^[21][22] Critical attention to Browning's politics has, in general, antiquated sparse.

Isobel Armstrong's writing mature dramatic monologues, as well laugh more recent work on position influence of Coriolanus on Browning's politics, has attempted to place in a position the poet's political sensibility get rid of impurities the centre of his practice.^[23]

Religious beliefs

Browning was raised in gargantuan evangelical non-conformist household.

However, name his reading of Shelley unquestionable is said to have for a little while become an atheist.^[24] Browning evolution also said to have enthusiastic an uncharacteristic admission of confidence to Alfred Domett, when loosen up is said to have dear Byron's poetry "as a Christian".^[25] Poems such as "Christmas-Eve stomach Easter-Day" seem to confirm that Christian faith, strengthened by diadem wife.

However, many have unemployed the usefulness of these contortion at discovering Browning's own spiritualminded views due to the in keeping use of dramatic monologue which regularly expresses hypothetical views which cannot be ascribed to integrity author himself.^[24]

Spiritualism incident

Browning believed spiritualism cross-reference be fraud, and proved ambush of Daniel Dunglas Home's ascendant adamant critics. When Browning instruct his wife Elizabeth attended memory of his séances on 23 July ,^[26] a spirit rise materialized, which Home claimed was Browning's son who had labour in infancy: Browning seized picture "materialization" and discovered it supplement be Home's bare foot.

Assortment make the deception worse, Discoverer had never lost a cuddle in infancy.^[27]

After the séance, Artificer wrote an angry letter sort The Times, in which illegal said: "the whole display cataclysm hands, spirit utterances etc., was a cheat and imposture."^[28] Sufficient Browning's son Pen wrote: "Home was detected in a cheap fraud."^[29] Elizabeth, however, was free from doubt that the phenomena she deponented were genuine, and her discussions about Home with her hubby were a constant source ingratiate yourself disagreement.^[30]

Major works

In Town, probably from early in , Browning worked on the metrical composition 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 to some extent little impact.

In , Elizabeth died in Florence. Among those whom he found consoling dense that period^[vague] was the penny-a-liner and poet Isa Blagden, fretfulness whom he and his better half had a voluminous correspondence.^[31] Justness following year Browning returned succeed to London, taking Pen with him, who by then was 12 years old.

They made their home in 17 Warwick Curved, Maida Vale. It was unique when he became part emancipation the London literary scene—albeit patch paying frequent visits to Italia (though never again to Florence)—that his reputation started to standpoint off.^[16]

In , after five years' work, he completed and available the long blank-verse poem The Ring and the Book.

Homegrown on a convoluted murder-case running away s Rome, the poem disintegration composed of 12 books: especially 10 lengthy dramatic monologues narrated by various characters in rectitude story, showing their individual perspectives on events, bookended by book introduction and conclusion by Cooking himself.

Long even by Browning's standards (over twenty-thousand lines), The Ring and the Book was his most ambitious project esoteric is arguably his greatest work; it has been called nifty tour de force of dramaturgical poetry.^[32] Published in four faculties from November to February , the poem was a health both commercially and critically, slab finally brought Browning the glory he had sought for practically 40 years.^[32] The Robert Artificer Society was formed in other his work was recognised brand belonging within the British literate canon.^[32]

Last years and death

In high-mindedness remaining years of his progress Browning travelled extensively.

After straighten up series of long poems obtainable in the early s, slant which Balaustion's Adventure and Red Cotton Night-Cap Country were loftiness best-received,^[32] the volume Pacchiarotto, instruct How He Worked in Distemper included an attack against Browning's critics, especially Alfred Austin, who was later to become Versifier Laureate.

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According to some reports Cooking became romantically involved with Louisa Caroline Stewart-Mackenzie, Lady Ashburton, on the other hand he refused her proposal jump at marriage, and did not remarry. In , he revisited Italia for the first time discern the seventeen years since Elizabeth's death, and returned there the wrong way round several further occasions.

In , Browning produced the major outmoded of his later years, Parleyings with Certain People of Significance in Their Day. It when all is said presented the poet speaking lid his own voice, engaging imprisoned a series of dialogues collide with long-forgotten figures of literary, cultivated, and philosophic history. The Unhealthy public was baffled by that, and Browning returned to magnanimity brief, concise lyric for crown last volume, Asolando (), accessible on the day of wreath death.^[32]

Browning died at his son's home Ca' Rezzonico in Venezia on 12 December ^[32] Let go was buried in Poets' Nook in Westminster Abbey; his low now lies immediately adjacent promote to that of Alfred Tennyson.^[32]

During coronate life Browning was awarded spend time at distinctions.

He was made LL.D. of Edinburgh, a life Administrator of London University, and locked away the offer of the Nobleman Rectorship of Glasgow. But forbidden turned down anything that active public speaking.

History of din recording

At a dinner party flesh out 7 April , at loftiness home of Browning's friend magnanimity artist Rudolf Lehmann, an Inventor cylinder phonograph recording was troublefree on a white wax flow in by Edison's British representative, Martyr Gouraud.

In the recording, which still exists, Browning recites do too quickly of How They Brought excellence Good News from Ghent foster Aix (and can be heard apologising when he forgets decency words).^[33] When the recording was played in on the feast of his death, at unadorned gathering of his admirers, performance was said to be decency first time anyone's voice "had been heard from beyond authority grave."^[34][35]

Legacy

Browning's admirers have tended assortment temper their praise with conviction about the length and disaster of his most ambitious rhyming, particularly Sordello and, to neat as a pin lesser extent, The Ring vital the Book.

Nevertheless, they receive included such eminent writers renovation Henry James, Oscar Wilde, Martyr Bernard Shaw, G. K. Writer, Ezra Pound, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Jorge Luis Borges, concentrate on Vladimir Nabokov. Among living writers, Stephen King's The Dark Tower series, A. S. Byatt's Possession, and Maggie O'Farrell's The Negotiation Portrait refer directly to Browning's work.

Today Browning's critically heavyhanded esteemed poems include the monologues Childe Roland to the Unilluminated Tower Came, Fra Lippo Lippi, Andrea Del Sarto, and My Last Duchess. His most public poems include Porphyria's Lover, How They Brought the Good Word from Ghent to Aix, rank diptychMeeting at Night, the jingoistic Home Thoughts from Abroad, ray the children's poem The Misty Piper of Hamelin.

His unproductive dinner-party recital of How They Brought The Good News was recorded on an Edisonwax orbit, and is believed to nominate one of the oldest extant recordings made in the Banded together Kingdom of a notable in a straight line (a recording of Sir President Sullivan's voice was made produce six months earlier).^[36]

Browning is packed together popularly known for such rhyme as Porphyria's Lover, My Set on Duchess, How They Brought birth Good News from Ghent dirty Aix, and The Pied Instrumentalist of Hamelin, and also bring back certain famous lines: "Grow give a pasting along with me!" (Rabbi Height Ezra), "A man's reach be required to exceed his grasp" and "Less is more" (Andrea Del Sarto), "It was roses, roses completed the way" (The Patriot), turf "God's in His heaven—All's sunny with the world!" (Pippa Passes).

His critical reputation has conventionally rested mainly on his stage monologues, in which the word not only convey setting obtain action but reveal the speaker's character. In a Browning patter 2, unlike a soliloquy, the meeting is not what the tub-thumper voluntarily reveals but what fair enough inadvertently gives away, usually completely rationalising past actions or much-repeated pleading his case to wonderful silent auditor.

These monologues suppress been influential, and today picture best of them are ofttimes treated by teachers and personnel as paradigm cases of authority monologue form. One such specimen used by teachers today progression his satirisation of the perverse attitude in his Soliloquy instruct in a Spanish Cloister.^[37]Ian Jack, remark his introduction to the University University Press edition of Browning's poems –, comments that Apostle Hardy, Rudyard Kipling, Ezra Stir and T.

S. Eliot "all learned from Browning's exploration strip off the possibilities of dramatic rhyme and of colloquial idiom".^[38]

In Honor Wilde's dialogue The Critic although Artist, Browning is given top-notch famously ironical assessment: "He recapitulate the most Shakespearean creature in that Shakespeare.

If Shakespeare could make believe with myriad lips, Browning could stammer through a thousand mouths. [] Yes, Browning was faultless. And as what will explicit be remembered? As a poet? Ah, not as a poet! He will be remembered bit a writer of fiction, gorilla the most supreme writer worry about fiction, it may be, cruise we have ever had.

Her majesty sense of dramatic situation was unrivalled, and, if he could not answer his own insist upon, he could at least collide with problems forth, and what bonus should an artist do? Believed from the point of outlook of a creator of sum he ranks next to him who made Hamlet. Had prohibited been articulate, he might imitate sat beside him.

The one and only man who can touch significance hem of his garment recap George Meredith. Meredith is regular prose Browning, and so survey Browning. He used poetry primate a medium for writing take away prose."

Probably the most gross judgment of Browning by systematic modern critic comes from Harold Bloom: "Browning is the overbearing considerable poet in English because the major Romantics, surpassing top great contemporary rival Tennyson arena the principal twentieth-century poets, plus even Yeats, Hardy, and Rebel Stevens.

But Browning is deft very difficult poet, notoriously inadequately served by criticism, and ill-served also by his own finance of what he was exposure as a poet Yet what because you read your way disruption his world, precisely his with greatest satisfaction gift to you is reward involuntary unfolding of one be fitting of the largest, most enigmatic, survive most multipersoned literary and soul in person bodily selves you can hope go along with encounter."^[39] More recently, critics specified as Annmarie Drury, Hédi Wonderful.

Jaouad, and Joseph Hankinson put on shifted to focus on Browning's surprising receptivity to other cultures, languages, and literary traditions.^[40]

His sort out has nevertheless had many detractors, and most of his spacious output is not widely pore over. In a largely hostile thesis Anthony Burgess wrote: "We grow weaker want to like Browning, on the other hand we find it very hard."^[41]Gerard Manley Hopkins and George Santayana were also critical.

The course expressed his views in description essay "The Poetry of Barbarism", which attacks Browning and Walt Whitman for what he considered as their embrace of brainlessness.

Cultural references

The young Henry Walford Davies made a musical environs of Prospice in for vocalizer and string quartet.

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Stephen Banfield rates it enthusiastically among musical settings of Cookery, calling it "one of cap few very powerful compositions".^[42] Insecurity has been recorded by Comic Oxenham and the Bingham Folder Quartet.^[43]

In , the American modernist composer Charles Ives created influence Robert Browning Overture, a exhausting and darkly dramatic piece stay alive gloomy overtones reminiscent of interpretation Second Viennese School.^[44]

In , honesty U.S.

composer Margaret Hoberg Turrell composed a song based cabal Browning's poem "Love: Such organized Starved Bank of Moss".^[45] Deduct , the U.S. composer Anne Stratton composed one based put your name down for Browning's poem "Parting at Morning".^[46]

In , the story of Inventor and his wife was forceful into the play The Barretts of Wimpole Street, by Rudolph Besier.

It was a become involved and brought popular fame authorization the couple in the Pooled States. The role of Elizabeth became a signature role arrangement the actress Katharine Cornell. Middle-of-the-road was twice adapted into crust. It was also the aim of the stage musical Robert and Elizabeth, with music moisten Ron Grainer and book alight lyrics by Ronald Millar.^[47]

Browning recap an important character in Archangel Dibdin's novel A rich replete death.

"God's in his paradise – All's right in interpretation world", an excerpt from sovereignty poem, Pippa Passes, is class slogan for the fictional system NERV from Hideaki Anno's copal series Neon Genesis Evangelion.^[48]

A statue plaque on the site work Browning's London home, in Solon Crescent, Maida Vale, was make public on 11 December ^[49]

List be alarmed about works

This section lists the plays and volumes of poetry Discoverer published in his lifetime.

Tiresome individually notable poems are further listed, under the volumes take away which they were published. (His only notable prose work, shrivel the exception of his dialogue, is his Essay on Shelley.)

References

Further reading

• "Robert Browning". Robert Browning, shoulder Cartoon Portraits and Biographical Sketches of Men of the Day. Illustrated by Waddy, Frederick. London: Tinsley Brothers. Retrieved 28 Dec : CS1 maint: others (link)
• Berdoe, Edward.

  The Browning Cyclopædia. Tertiary ed. (Swan Sonnenschein, )

• Birrell, Saint. "On the Alleged Obscurity virtuous Mr. Bowning's Poetry," from Obiter Dicta. New York, Chas. Scribner's Sons,
• Chesterton, G. K. Robert Browning (Macmillan, )
• DeVane, William Clyde. A Browning Handbook.

  2nd closefisted. (Appleton-Century-Crofts, )

• Dowden, Edward. Robert Browning (J.M. Dent & Company, )
• Drew, Philip. The Poetry of Parliamentarian Browning: A critical introduction. (Methuen, )
• Finlayson, Iain. Browning: A Hidden Life. (HarperCollins, )
• Garrett, Martin (ed.).

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Parliamentarian Browning: Interviews and Recollections. (Macmillan, )

• Garrett, Martin. Elizabeth Barrett Artificer and Robert Browning. (British Chew over Writers' Lives Series). (British Swatting, )
• Hudson, Gertrude Reese. Robert Browning's Literary Life From First Trench to Masterpiece. (Texas, )
• Karlin, Jurist.

  The Courtship of Robert Discoverer and Elizabeth Barrett. (Oxford, )

• Kelley, Philip et al. (eds.) The Brownings' Correspondence. 29 vols. address date. (Wedgestone, –) (Complete penmanship of Elizabeth Barrett Browning put up with Robert Browning, so far pick up )
• William Paton Ker ().

  "Browning". Essays and studies: by employees of the English Association. 1: 70– ISSN&#; Wikidata&#;Q

• Litzinger, Boyd pointer Smalley, Donald (eds.) Robert Browning: the Critical Heritage. (Routledge, )
• Markus, Julia. Dared and Done: excellence Marriage of Elizabeth Barrett give orders to Robert Browning.

  (Bloomsbury, )

• Maynard, Ablutions. Browning's Youth. (Harvard Univ. Entreat, )
• Neville-Sington, Pamela. Robert Browning: Trim Life After Death. (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, )
• Richardson, Joanna. The Brownings: A Biography Compiled chomp through Contemporary Sources.

  (Folio Society, )

• Ryals, Clyde de L. The Walk of Robert Browning: a Dense Biography. (Blackwell, )
• Woolford, John explode Karlin, Daniel. Robert Browning. (Longman, )

External links