Poet's Corner
Robert Browning
Read his poem "Home—Thoughts from Abroad"
(1812-1889)
Nationality:
English
Career: Poet and playwright
Browning was born in 1812 in Camberwell, a suburb of London, to middle-class parents. His father Robert Browning, Sr., a clerk for the Bank of England, possessed cultivated artistic and literary tastes; his mother, Sarah Anne Wiedemann, was a devout Christian who pursued interests in music and nature. Browning was an intellectually precocious child who read at the age of five and composed his first poetry at six. He read widely from his father's extensive rare book collection, acquiring an abundant, if unsystematic, knowledge of a broad range of different literatures. At ten Browning began Peckam School, where he remained for four years. In 1828 he entered London University but quit school after less than a year, determined to pursue a career as a poet. Browning lived with his parents until 1846 and so was able to devote his entire energies to his art. His literary career began in 1833 with the anonymous publication of the long poem Pauline: A Fragment of a Confession. This was followed by Paracelsus (1835) and Sordello (1840). All three of these early works met with mostly negative reviews. Beginning in 1841 Browning published a series of eight pamphlets collectively titled Bells and Pomegranates (1841-45). The series contains narrative poems, including Pippa Passes (1841); verse dramas; and two collections of shorter pieces, Dramatic Lyrics (1842) and Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1845). Although Browning had to this point failed to win either popular or critical esteem, his work did gain the admiration of Elizabeth Barrett, who was a respected and popular poet in her own right. In 1844 she praised Browning in one of her works and received a grateful letter from him in response. They met the following year, fell in love, and in 1846, ignoring the disapproval of her father, eloped to Italy, where they spent the remainder of their life together. Their son Robert Wiedemann Barrett Browning was born in 1849. In Italy, Browning continued to write, and though public success still eluded him, his works attracted increasing respect from critics. Following Elizabeth's death in 1861, he and his son returned to England. The appearance in 1864 of the collection Dramatis Personae finally brought Browning his first significant critical and popular acclaim. In 1868-69 he published The Ring and the Book, a series of dramatic monologues in which various speakers relate different perspectives on an actual seventeenth-century Italian murder case. Tremendously popular, The Ring and the Book firmly established Browning's reputation. From 1868 on, Browning was generally regarded as one of England's greatest living poets. He remained highly productive, and the publication of his Dramatic Idyls (1879-80) and other works brought him worldwide fame. In 1881 the Browning Society was established in London for the purpose of studying his poems. Near the end of his life he was the recipient of various honors, including a degree from Oxford University and an audience with Queen Victoria. Following his death in 1889 during a stay in Venice, he was buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey.
Source: Exploring Poetry, Gale.