Robert Browning

Life

Born with Camberwell, in the Surrey, England, Robert is the only son of Robert and Sarah Wiedemann Browning. His/her father is a man of a great intelligence and a perfect equality of character which is employed with the Banque of England. He has a library of approximately 6.000 books - several of a great darkness and mysterious. Robert Browning thus grows in a hearth where it can have an easy access to the Littérature. His/her mother, to which it is ardently attached, is a nonconformist excessively pious woman, the girl of a German ship-owner established with Dundee, and also worthy, as well intellectually as morally, as his/her husband of the affection of his son. The family saw simply, but his/her father encourages the interest of Robert for the literature and the Art S.

In its childhood, it is characterized by its love from poetry and the natural history. At twelve years, he writes a book of poetry which he destroys when he does not find to publish it. After in one or two private schools, and being revealed an inseparable dislike of the school life, he studies with a tutor.

It is student endowed and, as of the fourteen years age, he usually speaks the French, the Greek , the Italian , and the Latin . He becomes a large admiror of the romantic poets , particularly Percy Bysshe Shelley. Just like this last, it becomes briefly atheistic and Végétarien, but, later, it will regard all this as a passing fancy. At the sixteen years age, it goes to the University College of London, but gives up after its first year.

By his mother, Robert inherits a great musical talent and composes of arrangements for various songs. His/her grandmother is also of creole blood. Thomas Chase described the dye of Browning like black, and its hair as buckled. The same attack its wife of birth anglo-jamaïcaine, Elizabeth Barrett.

In March 1833, Pauline: A Fragment of a confession is published anonymously by Saunders and Otley, with the money of its family, and marks the beginning of its career of poet. Long religious poem, it is initially desired by its young author like the first of a series of work produced by several Avatar S of itself (the poet, the Compositeur, etc), but Browning gives up the project. Later, it will be very embarrassed by this poem, adding a foreword somewhat contrite to the edition 1868 of its Collected Poems , in which it asks for the indulgence of its readers while reading what, in its eyes, is an early work, before undertaking large modifications with the poem for the edition of 1888, with this note:: “twenty years' endurance off long year eyesore seems enough”, “to support twenty years a horror appears sufficiently long”.

After a first voyage in Italy in 1834, Browning publishes in 1835 the long dramatic poem Paracelsus , primarily a series of monologs of the doctor and Alchimiste Suisse Paracelse and of its friends. Published under the true name of Browning, in an edition financed by his/her father, the poem has a small business success and critical, drawing the attention of Carlyle, Wordsworth and other men of the letters, and marks its introduction into the literary company of London. At that time, the young poet is very asked in the literary circles for his sharp spirit and his blazing style, and it embarks in two not very considered companies: a series of parts of Théâtre, which do not have success and are forgotten today, and Sordello , a very long poem in pentameters (towards white) in connection with an obscure enmity in the north of the medieval Italy , at the time of the wars between Guelfes and Gibelins (prone difficult for an assistantship accustomed to the annotations in the historical fictions). Chatterer and full with obscure references, the poem became a scapegoat for the feelings anti-Browning of criticisms, and the young poet became an object of derision, avoided by much in the literary company of London. The effect on the career of Browning was catastrophic, and it did not recover its place near the public - and the sales which go with - that with the publication of The Ring and the Book , ( the ring and the book ), almost thirty years afterwards.

With the beginning of the year 1840, it continues to publish shorter plays and poetries, under the general title Bells and Pomegranates . Although the parts, except for Pippa Passes - more a dramatic poetry that a part - are almost entirely forgotten, volumes of poetry ( Dramatic Lyrics , initially published in 1842, and Dramatic Romances and Lyrics of 1845) are often regarded as the best work of the poet, containing several of its most known poetries. Although more admired now, volumes were mainly ignored, then, following the rout of Sordello .

Beginning 1845, Browning started to correspond with Elizabeth Barrett, semi-invalid, and both were made a secret court far from the eyes of the authoritative father of the young woman, before marrying in secrecy in 1846 and fleeing in Italy. Their son, the painter and critical Robert Wiedemann Browning, known in the family like “PEN”, was born with Florence in 1849. The Browning continued to write and publish poetry from their Italian house during every year 1850. The first publication of Robert Browning after his marriage is Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day , long religious work published in 1850. Men and Women ( men and the women ), a series of fifty dramatic poems recited by fifty fictitious and historical characters different, with one fifty-and-unième, One Word More , whose Browning itself is the narrator and devoted to his wife, is published in 1855. the men and the women - her title is drawn from worms of Sonnets from the Portuguese of his wife - is generally regarded as its collection more successful by modern criticisms, and much described it like one of the best books published in the England victorienne, but the collection has little success at the time of its first edition and the sales remained weak.

After the death of Elizabeth in 1861, Browning and its son return to London. When its first new work in nine years, Dramatis personae , is published in 1864, the reputation of Browning changes on behalf of the critic and the public; a complete edition of its poems was published the previous year and was rather well sold. Dramatis Personae is a collection of eighteen poems, of which much are slightly darker than those of Men and Women , the central theme being still the dramatic poems déclamés by historical, literary and fictitious characters. The religious polemics of the time, the description of the matrimonial distress, seem more and more in the work of Browning. Dramatis Personae is the first volume of poetry of Browning to be sold to deserve an 2nd edition rather well, although the sales are not spectacular. Its literary statute is recognized by an honorary research grant to Balliol College, Oxford, in 1867.

In 1868, Browning finishes finally and publishes the long poem in white worms The Ring and the Book , which makes it soon rich and celebrates and ensures its reputation near the critics in the forefront of the English poets. Based on a complicated business of murder made in the years 1690 with Rome, the poem is composed of twelve parts, comprising ten long dramatic poems reported by the various characters of the history, showing their individual vision of the events, accompanied by an introduction and a conclusion by Browning itself. Extraordinarily long, even for Browning (more than twenty thousand lines), The Ring and the Book is the most ambitious project of the poet and is greeted like a feat of ingenuity of dramatic poetry. Separately published in four volumes as from November 1868 until February 1869, poetry is a business success and critical enormous and finally brings to Browning the fame which he sought and deserved during almost thirty years of work.

Its ensured fame and its fortune, Browning becomes again the prolific author during the twenty last years of its life which it had been at the beginning of his career, travelling intensely and again attending the literary company of London; he manages to publish not less than fifteen new volumes. None of this last work had the popularity of The Ring and the Book , and they are mainly ignored today. However, the posterior work of Browning underwent an important critical revaluation, these last years, and one witnesses an renewed interest for his poetic talent and his psychological perspicacity. After a series of long poems published in the years 1870 - whose Fifine At the Fair and Red Cotton Night-Cape Country is most interesting - Browning turns worms of the shorter poems again. Volume Pacchiarotto, and How He Worked in Distemper includes a rancorous attack against its criticisms, particularly the poet prize winner Alfred Austin. In 1887, Browning produces the more important work of its last years, Parleyings with Certain People off Importance In Their Day . It represents finally the poet speaking about his own voice, engaging in a series of dialogs with the forgotten figures of the literary, artistic, and philosophical history. Once more, the public victorien is diverted, and Browning returns to the short and concise text for its last volume, Asolando (1889).

According to certain writings, Browning had a connection with Lady Ashburton in the years 1870, but did not remarié itself. In 1878, it returns to Italy for the first time since the death of Elizabeth, and goes back there to several occasions. He dies in the house of his son, with the palate Ca' Rezzonico, Venice in December 1889, and is buried in the square of the poets of the Abbaye of Westminster; its tomb is beside that of Alfred Tennyson.

Works

Poetries and Dramas

Pauline - Fragment of a confession (1833)
Paracelse (1835)
Strafford (1837), historical tragedy
Sordello (1840
Bells and grenades (1841-1846): Pippa (1841) - dramatic Poems (1842) - the return of the Druzes (1843) - dramatic Poems and lovesongs (1845) - Luria (1846)
the Christmas Eve and the Easter Day (1850), poem
Two poems (1854), in collaboration with Elisabeth Barrett Browning
Men and women (1855)
Dramatis personae (1864)
the ring and the book (1868-1869)
the adventure of Balaustion (1871)
the prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau (1871)
Fifine with the fair (1872)
country of the night-caps out of red cotton (1873)
Apology for Aristophane (1875)
the Album of the inn (1875)
Pacchiarotto (1876)
Agamemnon of Eschyle (1877), translation
Saisiaz; two poets of Croisic (1878)
Idylles dramatic (1879-1880)
Jocoseria (1883)
imaginations of Ferishtah (1894)
Discussions with important people at their time (1887)
Asolando: imaginations and realities (1890)
New poems (1914)

Correspondence

Correspondence with Elisabeth Barrett (1845-1846)
Letters (1933)

Simple: Robert Browning

Random links: