Public domain photo of Robert Browning, by Julia Margaret Cameron
Robert Browning (1812-1889)
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"If the pronunciation of the English language were forgotten, Browning would be held the greatest of modern poets, having treated the greatest variety of subjects in a powerful manner." Alfred Tennyson to William Allingham. A private remark. Tennyson and Browning were lasting friends and admirers of each other, but Tennyson often chaffed him about his "barbarous" rhymes.
Literary Criticism
Bohm, Arnd. "Increasing suspicion about Browning's Grammarian." Victorian Poetry, Summer, 2006. ["A Grammarian's Funeral"]
Dupras, Joseph A. "Browning's 'My Last Duchess': Paragon and parergon." Papers on Language & Literature, Winter 1996, Vol. 32 Issue 1. ["My Last Duchess"]
Finlayson, Iain. A review of Browning: A Private Life. Reviewer Richard Whittington-Egan remarks, "the real continuing interest in Browning revolves about the untangling of the complex of theologico-philosophical notions that fizzed in his brain." Contemporary Review, Sept. 2004.
Fontana, Ernest. "Gender and sexual anxiety in Browning's 'Waring' and 'The Guardian-Angel.'" Victorian Poetry, Summer, 2006.
Garrett, Martin. Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning: Interviews and Recollections (Palgrave Macmillan, 2000). Publisher's blurb.
Garrett, Martin. A Browning Chronology (Palgrave Macmillan, 1999). Publisher's blurb.
Hair, Donald S. "A Note on Meter, Music, and Meaning in Robert Browning's Fifine at the Fair." Victorian Poetry, Spring, 2001.
Inglesfield, Robert. "Two interpolated speeches in Robert Browning's 'A Death in the Desert.'" Victorian Poetry, Fall, 2003. ["A Death in the Desert"]
Keirstead, Christopher M. "Stranded at the border: Browning, France, and the challenge of cosmopolitanism in Red Cotton Night-Cap Country." Victorian Poetry, Winter, 2005.
Laporte, Charles. "Sacred and Legendary Artists: Anna Jameson and Barrett Browning in the hagiography of Pompilia." Says Laporte, "This essay is written to address the contrivance of Pompilia's status as the center and redemptress of The Ring and the Book." Victorian Poetry, Winter 2001.
Litzinger, Boyd and Donald Smalley, eds. Browning: the Critical Heritage (Routledge 1968, 2000). Reprints critical responses to Robert Browning's poetry from his contemporaries and later. From Google Books.
Maxwell, Catherine. "Browning's 'Porphyria's Lover.'" Explicator, Fall 1993, Vol. 52 Issue 1. ["Porphyria's Lover"]
Martens, Britta. "'Hardly shall I tell my joys and sorrows': Robert Browning's engagement with Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poetics." Victorian Poetry, Spring, 2005.
Merchant, Peter. "Winking through the chinks: Eros and Ellipsis in Robert Browning's 'Love Among the Ruins'" ["Love Among the Ruins"]. Victorian Poetry, Winter, 2007.
Peterfreund, Stuart. "Robert Browning's decoding of natural theology in 'Caliban upon Setebos.'" Victorian Poetry, Fall, 2005. ["Caliban upon Setebos"]
Roberts, Adam. A substantial introduction to Robert Browning from the Literary Encyclopedia.
Sassian, David. "The ritual in 'The Novel in The Ring and the Book': Browning, Henry James, Eric Gans." [Essay by Henry James, "The Novel in The Ring and the Book"]. Victorian Poetry, Fall, 2008.
Schad, John. "Victorians in Theory." Joseph Bristow reviews Victorians in Theory: From Derrida to Browning (Manchester University Press, 1999). Comparative Literature, Winter 2001.
Anderson, James E. "Robert Browning's 'Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister': Themes, Voices, and the Words, Hy, Zy, Hine." Anderson contends that the poem "is not a failed experiment with nonsense-words for a climax, but rather a carefully conceived dramatic situation with a terrifying end." Victorian Poetry, Volume 35, no. 3, Fall 1997 (taken offline).
Fontana, Ernest. "Sexual Tourism and Browning's 'The Englishman in Italy.'" On the relationship between the Englishman-speaker and the young Sorrentine female, Fortù, in this monologue. Victorian Poetry, Volume 36, no. 3, Fall 1998 (taken offline).
Fowler, Rowena. "Browning's Jews," On Browning's empathetic portrayals of Jews in his writing. Victorian Poetry, Volume 35, no. 3, Fall 1997 (taken offline).
Fulton, Lynn M. "The Standard of Flesh and Blood: Browning's Problems with Staged Drama," Fulton analyzes why Browning's plays are failures. Victorian Poetry, Volume 35, no. 2, Summer 1997 (taken offline).
Gray, Erik. "'Out of me, out of me!': Andrea, Ulysses, and Victorian Revisions of Egotistical Lyric." Covers Victorian responses to the problem of the lyric "I," focusing on Robert Browning's "Andrea Del Sarto" and Alfred Lord Tennyson's "Ulysses." Victorian Poetry, Vol. 36, no. 4, Winter 1998 (taken offline).
Hecimovich, Gregg. "'Just the thing for the time': Contextualizing Religion in Browning's 'The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St. Praxed's Church.'" Hecimovich considers the poem as Browning's examination of mid-century religious debate. In Victorian Poetry, Vol. 36, no. 3, Fall 1998 (taken offline).
Petch, Simon. "Equity and Natural Law in The Ring and the Book." Petch examines theories of jurisprudence, human justice, and natural law. In Victorian Poetry, Volume 35, no. 1, Spring 1996 (taken offline).
Polette, Keith. "The Many-Walled World of 'Andrea del Sarto':The Dynamics of Self-Expatriation," On the myopic imagining of Andrea Del Sarto. Victorian Poetry, Volume 35, no. 4, Winter 1997 (taken offline).
Reynolds, Margaret and Barbara Rosenbaum. "'Aeschylus' Soliloquy' by Elizabeth Barrett Browning." Prints the fragment of poetry known as the "Aeschylus' Soliloquy" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning and covers the history of its misattribution to Robert Browning. In Victorian Poetry, Volume 35, no. 3, Fall 1997 (taken offline).
Roberts, Adam. "The Ring and the Book: The Mage, the Alchemist, and the Poet." Roberts discusses Browning's use of alchemy as a metaphor for poetic practice. Victorian Poetry, Volume 36, no. 1, Spring 1998 (taken offline).
Wagner-Lawlor, Jennifer A. "The Pragmatics of Silence, and the Figuration of the Reader in Browning's Dramatic Monologues." On the role of the auditor/reader in Browning's dramatic monologues and linguistic theories of silence. Victorian Poetry, Volume 35, no. 3, Fall 1997 (taken offline).
Introduction, Biography
The Victorian Web has essays on Robert Browning's writing techniques, themes, biography, and the Victorian background.
A brief biography of Robert Browning from publisher Gale.
A short introduction to Robert Browning and to Elizabeth Barrett Browning from a Public Broadcasting Service special.
Reprint of an 1886 critical study of Robert Browning by Hiram Corson, from Project Gutenberg (moved or removed).
Reprint of an old Robert Browning biography, the 1891 edition of Life and Letters of Robert Browning by Mrs. Sutherland Orr, from Project Gutenberg (moved or removed).
Reprint of the Life of Browning by William Sharp, a long critical and biographical study, from Project Gutenberg (moved or removed).
Robert Browning, 1905, by C.H. Herford, from Project Gutenberg (moved or removed).
Bibliography, Texts, Web Sites
Web site for the Armstrong Browning Library, at Baylor University, dedicated to the Victorian poets Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning. The site includes access to "The Brownings: A Research Guide," a comprehensive online research guide to all known Browning-related material, some 70,000 items.
The New York Browning Society.
A brief note on Volume 15 (2007) of The complete works of Robert Browning with variant readings & annotations, edited by Allan C. Dooley and David Ewbank, from Ohio University Press. "As part of a projected 17-volume set presenting all the known writings of Browning (1812-1889), this volume features works from the later years of the English poet's life, when he focused on such themes as love, desire, faith, classical and British colonial history, and Middle Eastern tales that were in vogue then."
A brief note about The Poetical Works of Robert Browning Volume IX The Ring and the Book. Books IX-XII (2004) edited by Stefan Hawlin and T. A. J. Burnett, from Clarendon Press, Oxford. "This ninth volume in what has become the definitive edition of Browning's works brings the poet's famous poem to its conclusion."
A guide to research resources from the Victoria discussion list for Victorian Studies.
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