Robert Browning was a great Victorian poet after Alfred Lord Tennyson. He was noted for irony, characterization, dark humor, social commentary, historical settings, and challenging vocabulary and syntax.
Browning was born in south London and baptised (it is a common practice in Christianity) on 14 June 1812. The only son of Sarah Anna and Robert Browning. His father was a well-paid clerk for the Bank of England, earning about £150 per year. Browning’s paternal grandfather was a slave owner in the West Indies. Browning’s father did not like the slavery system and was an abolitionist (Abolitionism in the United Kingdom was the movement in the late 18th and early 19th centuries to end the practice of slavery).
Robert’s father had a library of some 6,000 books; many of them were rare so Robert grew up in a household with significant literary resources. His mother was a devout nonconformist and a talented musician. His younger sister, Sarianna became her brother’s companion in his later years. After the death of his wife in 1861, his father encouraged their interest in literature and the arts.
By the age of 12, Browning had written a book of poetry, which he later destroyed for want of a publisher. He did not like school so he learned in his father’s library and a private tutor. By 14 he was fluent in French, Greek, Italian, and Latin. He became an admirer of the Romantic poets, especially Shelley, whom he followed in becoming an atheist and a vegetarian.
When he was 16, he joined University College London and quit after just one year. His parents’ strong religious beliefs stopped him from continuing his education. He got his musical talent from his mother and created various songs. He refused a formal career dedicating himself to poetry. He lived with his family until he was 34 years old and relied on them for money until he got married. His father paid for the publication of his son’s poems.
In March 1833, “Pauline, a Fragment of a Confession” was published anonymously. It is a long poem dedicated to the poet Shelley.
In 1834 with Chevalier George, he started writing a book called “Paracelsus,” which was published in 1835. He probably got the idea for this book from Comte Amédée de Ripart-Monclar, to whom the book was dedicated. “Paracelsus” did well both commercially and critically. Famous authors like Wordsworth, Dickens, Landor, J. S. Mill, and the already famous Tennyson noticed and appreciated it. The book is a kind of monodrama (one-person) play without action. It’s about the challenges faced by an intellectual person trying to figure out their role in society. This book helped him become a part of the London literary community.
As a result of his new contacts, he met an actor William Charles Macready, who invited him to write a play. Strafford the play written by Robert was performed five times. Browning then wrote two other plays, one of which was not performed. At that time Browning failed to write drama.
In 1838, he went to Italy in search of historical information about the hate and conflict during the Guelph-Ghibelline wars. He wanted this background for his poem called “Sordello,” a long poem written in heroic couplets. In “Sordello,” he pretended to create a biography of the Mantuan bard mentioned by Dante in the Divine Comedy. This poem was published in 1840, but it didn’t do well and was widely criticized for its carelessness and obscurity. Tennyson, another famous poet, even said that he only understood the first and last lines of the poem.
However, Browning’s reputation started to improve a bit when he published a series of eight pamphlets called “Bells and Pomegranates” between 1841 and 1846.
In 1845 Robert Browning met Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who was also a famous poet during the Victorian Age. They met when Browning was 33 and Elizabeth Barrett was 39. They were romantically involved with each other, leading to their marriage and journey to Italy for Elizabeth’s health on 12 September 1846. However, they had to keep their marriage a secret at first because Elizabeth’s father didn’t approve of it.
At Robert Browning’s insistence, Elizabeth included her love sonnets for him in the second edition of her poetry collection. This helped boost her popularity as a poet. When the renowned poet William Wordsworth passed away in 1850, Elizabeth Barrett Browning was considered a serious candidate to become the Poet Laureate, which is a prestigious position in British poetry. However, the position ultimately went to Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
They settled in Italy and had one son born in 1849 named Robert Wiedemann Barrett Browning, known as “Penini” or “Pen,”. During their years in Italy, Robert Browning became captivated by the art and atmosphere of the country. He found Italy to be an enriching source of inspiration and learning. Later in his life, he referred to Italy as his university, indicating how much he had absorbed from the culture and surroundings there.
Their marriage was a happy one, and they enjoyed a positive relationship together during their time in Italy. In Florence, in 1853, Robert Browning wrote his well-known two-volume work titled “Men and Women.” However, when it was published in 1855, it didn’t gain much attention or popularity.
Sadly, in 1861, Elizabeth Barrett Browning passed away in Florence. The following year, Robert Browning returned to London, bringing their son Pen (12 years old) with him, and settled in London. It was during this period he became a part of the city’s (London) literary scene, that Robert Browning’s reputation as a poet started to rise. He continued to visit Italy frequently and began to establish himself as a prominent figure in the London literary community.
In 1868, after working on it for five years, Robert Browning completed and published a lengthy poem called “The Ring and the Book.” This poem is written in blank verse and consists of ten lengthy dramatic monologues, each narrated by different characters in the story. These characters share their unique perspectives on the events, and Browning himself provided an introduction and conclusion to the poem. “The Ring and the Book” was his most ambitious project and is often considered his greatest work. Some even describe it as a remarkable example of dramatic poetry.
The poem was published in four parts between November 1868 and February 1869. It achieved both commercial success and critical acclaim, finally bringing Browning the recognition he had been striving for over nearly four decades. In 1881, the Robert Browning Society was established, and his work was officially recognized as an important part of the British literary canon.
According to some reports Browning became romantically involved with Louisa Caroline but he refused her proposal of marriage and did not remarry.
In 1878, Robert Browning made a trip back to Italy to visit the tomb of his late wife, Elizabeth Barrett Browning. In the same year, Browning wrote a significant work during the later years of his life called “Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in Their Day.” This work marked a departure from his previous writings, as it allowed the poet to speak in his own voice. In this book, he engaged in a series of dialogues with historical figures from literature, art, and philosophy who had been largely forgotten. It was a unique departure from his usual style.
Robert Browning died on December 12, 1889, at his son’s home in Venice. He was laid to rest in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey, with his grave located right next to that of another famous poet, Alfred Tennyson. His final volume of poetry, titled “Asolando,” was published in 1889, the same day he passed away.
Browning’s critical reputation has traditionally rested mainly on his dramatic monologues, in which the words not only convey setting and action but reveal the speaker’s character. Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling, Ezra Pound, and T. S. Eliot praised his dramatic lyrics.
Today Browning’s critically most esteemed poems include the monologues Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, Fra Lippo Lippi, Andrea Del Sarto, and My Last Duchess.
His most popular poems include Porphyria’s Lover, How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix, the diptych Meeting at Night, the patriotic Home Thoughts from Abroad, and the children’s poem The Pied Piper of Hamelin.
Browning’s admirers included such eminent writers as Henry James, Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, G. K. Chesterton, Ezra Pound, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Jorge Luis Borges, and Vladimir Nabokov.