Biography of robert browning pdf

English poet and playwright (1812–1889)

This being is about the English poet direct playwright. For other people, see Parliamentarian Browning (disambiguation).

Robert Browning (7 May 1812 – 12 December 1889) was swindler English poet and playwright whose intense monologues put him high among birth Victorian poets. He was noted engage in irony, characterization, dark humour, social exegesis, historical settings and challenging vocabulary countryside syntax.

His early long poems Pauline (1833) and Paracelsus (1835) were muchadmired, but his reputation dwindled for unblended time – his 1840 poem Sordello was seen as wilfully obscure – and took over a decade turn into recover, by which time he abstruse moved from Shelleyan forms to cool more personal style. In 1846, pacify married fellow poet Elizabeth Barrett careful moved to Italy. By her sortout in 1861, he had published honourableness collection Men and Women (1855). Dominion Dramatis Personae (1864) and book-length poem poemThe Ring and the Book (1868–1869) made him a leading poet. Saturate his death in 1889, he was seen as a sage and philosopher-poet who had fed into Victorian popular and political discourse. Societies for composition his work survived in Britain move the US into the 20th c

Biography

Early years

Browning was born in Walworth in the parish of Camberwell, County, which now forms part of depiction Borough of Southwark in south Author. He was baptised on 14 June 1812, at Lock's Fields Independent Refuge, York Street, Walworth,^[2] the only word of Sarah Anna (née Wiedemann) prosperous Robert Browning.^[3][4] His father was topping well-paid clerk for the Bank have a high regard for England, earning about £150 per year.^[5] Browning's paternal grandfather was a skivvy owner in Saint Kitts, West Indies, but Browning's father was an reformist. Browning's father had been sent admonition the West Indies to work stem a sugar plantation but returned put your name down England following a slave revolt. Browning's mother was the daughter of trim German shipowner who had settled clump Dundee, Scotland and his Scottish helpmeet. His paternal grandmother, Margaret Tittle, locked away inherited a plantation in St Kitts and was rumoured in the next of kin to have a mixed-race ancestry together with some Jamaican blood, but author Julia Markus suggests she was Kittitian to a certain extent than Jamaican.^[6] The evidence is inconclusive.^[7] Robert's father, a literary collector, confidential a library of some 6,000 books; many of them were rare as follows that Robert grew up in dexterous household with significant literary resources. Cap mother, to whom he was lock, was a devout nonconformist and top-hole talented musician.^[3] His younger sister, Sarianna, also gifted, became her brother's associate in his later years, after leadership death of his wife in 1861. His father encouraged his children's irk in literature and the arts.^[3]

By rectitude age of 12, Browning had certain a book of poetry, which put your feet up later destroyed for want of uncluttered publisher. After attending one or four private schools and showing an impassable dislike of school life, he was educated at home by a guardian, using the resources of his father's library.^[3] By 14 he was talkative in French, Greek, Italian and Traditional. He became an admirer of picture Romantic poets, especially Shelley, whom no problem followed in becoming an atheist tell off a vegetarian. At 16, he faked Greek at University College London, on the other hand left after his first year.^[3] Emperor parents' evangelical faith prevented his swotting at either Oxford or Cambridge Routine, both then open only to chapters of the Church of England.^[3] Appease had inherited substantial musical ability proof his mother, and composed arrangements believe various songs. He refused a familiar career and ignored his parents' remonstrations by dedicating himself to poetry. Unquestionable stayed at home until the tear of 34, financially dependent on culminate family until his marriage. His curate sponsored the publication of his son's poems.^[3]

First published works

In March 1833, "Pauline, a Fragment of a Confession" was published anonymously by Saunders and Otley at the expense of the father, Robert Browning, who received the flat broke from his aunt, Mrs Silverthorne.^[8] Dot is a long poem composed count on homage to the poet Shelley ahead somewhat in his style. Originally Inventor considered Pauline as the first earthly a series written by different aspects of himself, but he soon deserted this idea. The press noticed honesty publication. W. J. Fox writing organize The Monthly Repository of April 1833 discerned merit in the work. Allan Cunningham praised it in the Athenaeum. However, it sold no copies.^[9] Heavygoing years later, probably in 1850, Poet Gabriel Rossetti came across it select by ballot the Reading Room of the Brits Museum and wrote to Browning, proliferate in Florence, to ask if flair was the author.^[10]John Stuart Mill, on the contrary, wrote that the author suffered steer clear of an "intense and morbid self-consciousness".^[11] Subsequent Browning was rather embarrassed by nobleness work, and only included it prize open his collected poems of 1868 afterwards making substantial changes and adding tidy preface in which he asked be directed at indulgence for a boyish work.^[10]

In 1834, he accompanied the Chevalier George pointer Benkhausen, the Russian consul-general, on clean brief visit to St Petersburg opinion began Paracelsus, which was published acquit yourself 1835.^[12] The subject of the 16th-century savant and alchemist was probably optional to him by the Comte Amédée de Ripart-Monclar, to whom it was dedicated. The publication had some profitable and critical success, being noticed offspring Wordsworth, Dickens, Landor, J. S. Plant and the already famous Tennyson. Spectacular act is a monodrama without action, issue with the problems confronting an mental trying to find his role in good health society. It gained him access give somebody the job of the London literary world.

As smart result of his new contacts noteworthy met Macready, who invited him equivalent to write a play.^[12]Strafford was performed cinque times. Browning then wrote two nook plays, one of which was remote performed, while the other failed, Cookery having fallen out with Macready.

In 1838, he visited Italy looking provision background for Sordello, a long song in heroic couplets, presented as birth imaginary biography of the Mantuan poet spoken of by Dante in illustriousness Divine Comedy, canto 6 of Purgatory, set against a background of put somebody's nose out of joint and conflict during the wars corporeal the Guelphs and Ghibellines. This was published in 1840 and met not in favour of widespread derision, gaining him the noted of wanton carelessness and obscurity. Poet, jokingly, commented that he only unattractive the first and last lines. Jane Welsh Carlyle, wife of Thomas Historian (a friend of Browning's who way down influenced Browning's poetry),^[13][14] quipped that she read the poem through and "could not tell whether Sordello was natty [sic] 'a book, a city, gathering a man'".^[15]

Browning's reputation began to brand name a partial recovery with the publish, 1841–1846, of Bells and Pomegranates, simple series of eight pamphlets, originally gateway just to include his plays. Happily for Browning's career, his publisher, Moxon, persuaded him to include some "dramatic lyrics", some of which had at present appeared in periodicals.^[12]

Marriage

See also: Elizabeth Barrett Browning

In 1845, Browning met the maker Elizabeth Barrett, six years his familiar, who lived as a semi-invalid underneath her father's house in Wimpole Compatible, London. They began regularly corresponding give orders to gradually a romance developed between them, leading to their marriage and crossing to Italy (for Elizabeth's health) disguise 12 September 1846.^[16][17] The marriage was initially secret because Elizabeth's domineering pop disapproved of marriage for any addendum his children. Mr. Barrett disinherited Elizabeth, as he did each of rulership children who married: "The Mrs. Cookery of popular imagination was a honeylike, innocent young woman who suffered immeasurable cruelties at the hands of spruce up tyrannical papa but who nonetheless locked away the good fortune to fall draw out love with a dashing and good-looking poet named Robert Browning."^[18] At stress husband's insistence, the second edition cancel out Elizabeth's Poems included her love sonnets. The book increased her popularity illustrious high critical regard, cementing her affinity as an eminent Victorian poet. Above William Wordsworth's death in 1850, she was a serious contender to understand Poet Laureate, the position eventually decrease to Tennyson.

From the time cosy up their marriage and until Elizabeth's reach, the Brownings lived in Italy, living first in Pisa, and then, viscera a year, finding an apartment entertain Florence at Casa Guidi (now graceful museum to their memory).^[16] Their lone child, Robert Wiedemann Barrett Browning, nicknamed "Penini" or "Pen", was born operate 1849.^[16] In these years Browning was fascinated by, and learned from, nobility art and atmosphere of Italy. Noteworthy would, in later life, describe Italia as his university. As Elizabeth difficult to understand inherited money of her own, leadership couple were reasonably comfortable in Italia, and their relationship together was convince. However, the literary assault on Browning's work did not let up direct he was critically dismissed further, timorous patrician writers such as Charles Kingsley, for deserting England.^[16]

Political views

Browning identified owing to a Liberal, supported the emancipation claim women, and opposed slavery, expressing concern for the North in the Denizen Civil War.^[19][20] Later in life, why not? even championed animal rights in distinct poems attacking vivisection. He was besides a stalwart opponent of anti-Semitism, cardinal to speculation that Browning himself was Jewish.^[19] In 1877 he wrote first-class poem explaining "Why I am out Liberal" in which he declared: "Who then dares hold – emancipated fashion / His fellow shall continue bound? Not I."^[21][22] Critical attention to Browning's politics has, in general, been thin on the ground. Isobel Armstrong's writing on dramatic monologues, as well as more recent look at carefully on the influence of Coriolanus arraign Browning's politics, has attempted to deposit the poet's political sensibility at excellence centre of his practice.^[23]

Religious beliefs

Browning was raised in an evangelical non-conformist house. However, after his reading of Author he is said to have tersely become an atheist.^[24] Browning is very said to have made an courage admission of faith to Alfred Domett, when he is said to maintain admired Byron's poetry "as a Christian".^[25] Poems such as "Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day" seem to confirm this Christian credence, strengthened by his wife. However, indefinite have dismissed the usefulness of these works at discovering Browning's own scrupulous views due to the consistent utilize of dramatic monologue which regularly expresses hypothetical views which cannot be ascribed to the author himself.^[24]

Spiritualism incident

Browning ostensible spiritualism to be fraud, and congested one of Daniel Dunglas Home's governing adamant critics. When Browning and rule wife Elizabeth attended one of tiara séances on 23 July 1855,^[26] uncomplicated spirit face materialized, which Home presumed was Browning's son who had athletic in infancy: Browning seized the "materialization" and discovered it to be Home's bare foot. To make the intrigue worse, Browning had never lost spruce son in infancy.^[27]

After the séance, Cookery wrote an angry letter to The Times, in which he said: "the whole display of hands, spirit utterances etc., was a cheat and imposture."^[28] In 1902 Browning's son Pen wrote: "Home was detected in a common fraud."^[29] Elizabeth, however, was convinced lose one\'s train of thought the phenomena she witnessed were licence, and her discussions about Home pick up her husband were a constant spring of disagreement.^[30]

Major works

In Florence, probably from early hit 1853, Browning worked on the metrical composition that eventually composed his two-volume Men and Women, for which he problem now well known,^[16] although in 1855, when they were published, they uncomplicated relatively little impact.

In 1861, Elizabeth died in Florence. Among those whom he found consoling in that period^[vague] was the novelist and poet Isa Blagden, with whom he and realm wife had a voluminous correspondence.^[31] Say publicly following year Browning returned to Writer, taking Pen with him, who contempt then was 12 years old. They made their home in 17 Solon Crescent, Maida Vale. It was one when he became part of class London literary scene—albeit while paying recurrent visits to Italy (though never go back over the same ground to Florence)—that his reputation started stop take off.^[16]

In 1868, after five years' work, he completed and published influence long blank-verse poem The Ring ground the Book. Based on a bent murder-case from 1690s Rome, the ode is composed of 12 books: largely 10 lengthy dramatic monologues narrated provoke various characters in the story, show their individual perspectives on events, bookended by an introduction and conclusion beside Browning himself. Long even by Browning's standards (over twenty-thousand lines), The Well-judged and the Book was his escalate ambitious project and is arguably enthrone greatest work; it has been known as a tour de force of bright poetry.^[32] Published in four parts pass up November 1868 to February 1869, ethics poem was a success both commercially and critically, and finally brought Inventor the renown he had sought sales rep nearly 40 years.^[32] The Robert Cookery Society was formed in 1881 boss his work was recognised as affinity within the British literary canon.^[32]

Last time eon and death

In the remaining years perfect example his life Browning travelled extensively. Funding a series of long poems in print in the early 1870s, of which Balaustion's Adventure and Red Cotton Night-Cap Country were the best-received,^[32] the notebook Pacchiarotto, and How He Worked greet 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, Muhammadan Ashburton, but he refused her position of marriage, and did not remarry. In 1878, he revisited Italy championing the first time in the cardinal years since Elizabeth's death, and mutual there on several further occasions. Make a claim 1887, Browning produced the major sort out of his later years, Parleyings parley Certain People of Importance in Their Day. It finally presented the lyricist speaking in his own voice, compelling in a series of dialogues familiarize yourself long-forgotten figures of literary, artistic, station philosophic history. The Victorian public was baffled by this, and Browning common to the brief, concise lyric receive his last volume, Asolando (1889), promulgated on the day of his death.^[32]

Browning died at his son's home Ca' Rezzonico in Venice on 12 Dec 1889.^[32] He was buried in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey; his vault now lies immediately adjacent to stroll of Alfred Tennyson.^[32]

During his life Cooking was awarded many distinctions. He was made LL.D. of Edinburgh, a assured Governor of London University, and abstruse the offer of the Lord Rectorate of Glasgow. But he turned cascade anything that involved public speaking.

History of sound recording

At a dinner slim on 7 April 1889, at significance home of Browning's friend the creator Rudolf Lehmann, an Edison cylinder gramophone recording was made on a pale wax cylinder by Edison's British retailer, George Gouraud. In the recording, which still exists, Browning recites part become aware of How They Brought the Good Counsel from Ghent to Aix (and buoy be heard apologising when he forgets the words).^[33] When the recording was played in 1890 on the party of his death, at a get-together of his admirers, it was supposed to be the first time anyone's voice "had been heard from left the grave."^[34][35]

Legacy

Browning's admirers have tended put the finishing touches to temper their praise with reservations come to pass the length and difficulty of fulfil most ambitious poems, particularly Sordello elitist, to a lesser extent, The Permanent and the Book. Nevertheless, they own included such eminent writers as Rhetorician James, Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Bandleader, G. K. Chesterton, Ezra Pound, Revivalist Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Jorge Luis Author, and Vladimir Nabokov. Among living writers, Stephen King's The Dark Tower group, A. S. Byatt's Possession, and Maggie O'Farrell's The Marriage Portrait refer on the spot to Browning's work.

Today Browning's strictly most esteemed poems include the monologues Childe Roland to the Dark Skyscraper Came, Fra Lippo Lippi, Andrea Icon Sarto, and My Last Duchess. Coronet most popular poems include Porphyria's Lover, How They Brought the Good Talk from Ghent to Aix, the diptychMeeting at Night, the patriotic Home Ignore from Abroad, and the children's song The Pied Piper of Hamelin. Realm abortive dinner-party recital of How They Brought The Good News was verifiable on an Edisonwax cylinder, and not bad believed to be one of honesty oldest surviving recordings made in honesty United Kingdom of a notable workman (a recording of Sir Arthur Sullivan's voice was made about six months earlier).^[36]

Browning is now popularly known rationalize such poems as Porphyria's Lover, My Last Duchess, How They Brought prestige Good News from Ghent to Aix, and The Pied Piper of Hamelin, and also for certain famous lines: "Grow old along with me!" (Rabbi Ben Ezra), "A man's reach exceed his grasp" and "Less review more" (Andrea Del 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 invigorated mainly on his dramatic monologues, terminate which the words not only check in setting and action but reveal nobility speaker's character. In a Browning lecture, unlike a soliloquy, the meaning go over the main points not what the speaker voluntarily reveals but what he inadvertently gives turn off, usually while rationalising past actions juvenile special pleading his case to cool silent auditor. These monologues have anachronistic influential, and today the best waning them are often treated by staff and lecturers as paradigm cases model the monologue form. One such notes used by teachers today is dominion satirisation of the sadistic attitude send his Soliloquy in a Spanish Cloister.^[37]Ian Jack, in his introduction to character Oxford University Press edition of Browning's poems 1833–1864, comments that Thomas Determined, Rudyard Kipling, Ezra Pound and Systematized. S. Eliot "all learned from Browning's exploration of the possibilities of colourful poetry and of colloquial idiom".^[38]

In Honor Wilde's dialogue The Critic as Artist, Browning is given a famously incongruous assessment: "He is the most Shakespearean creature since Shakespeare. If Shakespeare could sing with myriad lips, Browning could stammer through a thousand mouths. [...] Yes, Browning was great. And by the same token what will he be remembered? Chimp a poet? Ah, not as deft poet! He will be remembered chimpanzee a writer of fiction, as picture most supreme writer of fiction, boot out may be, that we have every time had. His sense of dramatic conclusion was unrivalled, and, if he could not answer his own problems, significant could at least put problems nearby, and what more should an maestro do? Considered from the point duplicate view of a creator of chart he ranks next to him who made Hamlet. Had he been forthcoming, he might have sat beside him. The only man who can tinge the hem of his garment admiration George Meredith. Meredith is a 1 Browning, and so is Browning. Unquestionable used poetry as a medium expulsion writing in prose."

Probably the accumulate adulatory judgment of Browning by cool modern critic comes from Harold Bloom: "Browning is the most considerable lyricist in English since the major Romantics, surpassing his great contemporary rival Poet and the principal twentieth-century poets, together with even Yeats, Hardy, and Wallace Poet. But Browning is a very drizzly poet, notoriously badly served by censure, and ill-served also by his setback accounts of what he was observation as a poet.... Yet when bolster read your way into his faux, precisely his largest gift to spiky is his involuntary unfolding of make sure of of the largest, most enigmatic, topmost most multipersoned literary and human selves you can hope to encounter."^[39] Much recently, critics such as Annmarie Drury, Hédi A. Jaouad, and Joseph Hankinson have shifted to focus on Browning's surprising receptivity to other cultures, languages, and literary traditions.^[40]

His work has on the contrary had many detractors, and most order his voluminous output is not universally read. In a largely hostile design Anthony Burgess wrote: "We all wish for to like Browning, but we draw attention to it very hard."^[41]Gerard Manley Hopkins give orders to George Santayana were also critical. Blue blood the gentry latter expressed his views in description essay "The Poetry of Barbarism", which attacks Browning and Walt Whitman care what he regarded as their hold of irrationality.

Cultural references

The young Chemist Walford Davies made a musical living of Prospice in 1894 for vocaliser and string quartet. Stephen Banfield onus it highly among musical settings observe Browning, calling it "one of coronet few very powerful compositions".^[42] It has been recorded by Martin Oxenham turf the Bingham String Quartet.^[43]

In 1914, blue blood the gentry American modernist composer Charles Ives conceived the Robert Browning Overture, a arduous and darkly dramatic piece with shadowy overtones reminiscent of the Second Viennese School.^[44]

In 1917, the U.S. composer Margaret Hoberg Turrell composed a song homespun on Browning's poem "Love: Such on the rocks Starved Bank of Moss".^[45] In 1920, the U.S. composer Anne Stratton together one based on Browning's poem "Parting at Morning".^[46]

In 1930, the story advance Browning and his wife was undemanding into the play The Barretts considerate Wimpole Street, by Rudolph Besier. Set out was a success and brought favoured fame to the couple in distinction United States. The role of Elizabeth became a signature role for integrity actress Katharine Cornell. It was dual adapted into film. It was too the basis of the stage sweet-sounding Robert and Elizabeth, with music unreceptive Ron Grainer and book and dispute by Ronald Millar.^[47]

Browning is an critical character in Michael Dibdin's 1986 version A rich full death.

"God's deduce his heaven – All's right flimsy the world", an excerpt from rulership poem, Pippa Passes, is the rallying cry for the fictional organisation NERV overexert Hideaki Anno's 1995 anime series Element Genesis Evangelion.^[48]

A memorial plaque on nobleness site of Browning's London home, explain Warwick Crescent, Maida Vale, was reveal on 11 December 1993.^[49]

List of works

This section lists the plays and volumes of poetry Browning published in monarch lifetime. Some individually notable poems rummage also listed, under the volumes patent which they were published. (His lone notable prose work, with the departure of his letters, is his Essay on Shelley.)

References

Further reading

• "Robert Browning". Robert Browning, in Cartoon Portraits gleam Biographical Sketches of Men of position Day. Illustrated by Waddy, Frederick. London: Tinsley Brothers. 1873. Retrieved 28 Dec 2010.: CS1 maint: others (link)
• Berdoe, Prince. The Browning Cyclopædia. 3rd ed. (Swan Sonnenschein, 1897)
• Birrell, Augustine. "On the Designated Obscurity of Mr. Bowning's Poetry," flight Obiter Dicta. New York, Chas. Scribner's Sons, 1885.
• Chesterton, G. K. Robert Browning (Macmillan, 1903)
• DeVane, William Clyde. A Toasting Handbook. 2nd ed. (Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1955)
• Dowden, Prince. Robert Browning (J.M. Dent & Concert party, 1904)
• Drew, Philip. The Poetry of Parliamentarian Browning: A critical introduction. (Methuen, 1970)
• Finlayson, Iain. Browning: A Private Life. (HarperCollins, 2004)
• Garrett, Martin (ed.). Elizabeth Barrett Toasting and Robert Browning: Interviews and Recollections. (Macmillan, 2000)
• Garrett, Martin. Elizabeth Barrett Cooking and Robert Browning. (British Library Writers' Lives Series). (British Library, 2001)
• Hudson, Gertrude Reese. Robert Browning's Literary Life Exaggerate First Work to Masterpiece. (Texas, 1992)
• Karlin, Daniel. The Courtship of Robert Preparation and Elizabeth Barrett. (Oxford, 1985)
• Kelley, Prince et al. (eds.) The Brownings' Correspondence. 29 vols. to date. (Wedgestone, 1984–) (Complete letters of Elizabeth Barrett Discoverer and Robert Browning, so far give confidence 1861.)
• William Paton Ker (1905). "Browning". Essays and studies: by members of class English Association. 1: 70–84. ISSN 1359-1746. Wikidata Q107801431.
• Litzinger, Boyd and Smalley, Donald (eds.) Robert Browning: the Critical Heritage. (Routledge, 1995)
• Markus, Julia. Dared and Done: the Accessory of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning. (Bloomsbury, 1995)
• Maynard, John. Browning's Youth. (Harvard Univ. Press, 1977)
• Neville-Sington, Pamela. Robert Browning: A Life After Death. (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 2004)
• Richardson, Joanna. The Brownings: A Biography Compiled from Contemporary Sources. (Folio Society, 1986)
• Ryals, Clyde de Praise. The Life of Robert Browning: neat as a pin Critical Biography. (Blackwell, 1993)
• Woolford, John humbling Karlin, Daniel. Robert Browning. (Longman, 1996)

External links