Robert Browning  

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Robert Browning (7 May 1812 – 12 December 1889) was an English poet and playwright whose dramatic monologues put him high among the Victorian poets. He was noted for irony, characterization, dark humour, social commentary, historical settings and challenging vocabulary and syntax.

His early long poems Pauline (1833) and Paracelsus (1835) were acclaimed – but his rating fell back for a time – his 1840 poem Sordello was seen as wilfully obscure – and took over a decade to recover, by which time he had moved from Shelleyan forms to a more personal style. In 1846 he married fellow poet Elizabeth Barrett and moved to Italy. By her death in 1861 he had published the collection Men and Women (1855). His Dramatis Personae (1864) and book-length epic poem The Ring and the Book (1868–1869) made him a leading poet. By his death in 1889 he was seen as a sage and philosopher-poet who had fed into Victorian social and political discourse. Societies for studying his work survived in Britain and the US into the 20th century.

A noted poem is Porphyria's Lover.

Complete list of works

• Pauline: A Fragment of a Confession (1833)
• Paracelsus (1835)
• Strafford (play) (1837)
• Sordello (1840)
• Bells and Pomegranates No. I: Pippa Passes (play) (1841)
• Bells and Pomegranates No. II: King Victor and King Charles (play) (1842)
• Bells and Pomegranates No. III: Dramatic Lyrics (1842)
  • "Porphyria's Lover"
  • "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister"
  • "My Last Duchess"
  • "The Pied Piper of Hamelin"
  • "Count Gismond"
  • "Johannes Agricola in Meditation"
• Bells and Pomegranates No. IV: The Return of the Druses (play) (1843)
• Bells and Pomegranates No. V: A Blot in the 'Scutcheon (play) (1843)
• Bells and Pomegranates No. VI: Colombe's Birthday (play) (1844)
• Bells and Pomegranates No. VII: Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1845)
  • "The Laboratory"
  • "How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix"
  • "The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church"
• Bells and Pomegranates No. VIII: Luria and A Soul's Tragedy (plays) (1846)
• Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day (1850)
• Men and Women (1855)
  • "Love Among the Ruins"
  • "The Last Ride Together"
  • "A Toccata of Galuppi's"
  • "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came"
  • "Fra Lippo Lippi"
  • "Andrea Del Sarto"
  • "The Patriot/ An Old Story"
  • "A Grammarian's Funeral"
  • "An Epistle Containing the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish, the Arab Physician"
• Dramatis Personae (1864)
  • "Caliban upon Setebos"
  • "Rabbi Ben Ezra"
• The Ring and the Book (1868-9)
• Balaustion's Adventure (1871)
• Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Saviour of Society (1871)
• Fifine at the Fair (1872)
• Red Cotton Night-Cap Country, or, Turf and Towers (1873)
• Aristophanes' Apology (1875)
• The Inn Album (1875)
• Pacchiarotto, and How He Worked in Distemper (1876)
• The Agamemnon of Aeschylus (1877)
• La Saisiaz and The Two Poets of Croisic (1878)
• Dramatic Idylls (1879)
• Dramatic Idylls: Second Series (1880)
• Jocoseria (1883)
• Ferishtah's Fancies (1884)
• Parleyings with Certain People of Importance In Their Day (1887)
• Asolando (1889)
  • Prospice