Authors: Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Peter Washington
ISBN-13: 9781400040223, ISBN-10: 1400040221
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Date Published: January 2003
Edition: First Edition
Robert Browning (1812-1889) was born in Camberwell, London, the son of a clerk in the Bank of England. The strongest influence on his education were the books in his father's extensive library, particularly the writings of Byron and Shelley. His dramatic poem Paracelsus, published in 1835, established his reputation and brought him the friendship of the actor-manager William Macready. When Macready's eldest son Willie was ill in bed, Browning wrote for the boy's entertainment the poem of The Pied Piper, a story he remembered from his own childhood. After its appearance in print in 1842, it became a children's classic, attracting new illustrators in every generation.
In 1846 Robert Browning married a fellow poet, Elizabeth Barrett, eloping with her to Italy where they lived until Elizabeth's death in 1861. He them returned to England to live with his only sister Sarianna, but later he went back to Italy, where he died at the Rezzonico Palace in Venice.
Peter Washington is the editor of many of the Everyman's Library Pocket Poets, including Love Poems, and is the author of Madame Blavatsky's Baboon: A History of the Mystics, Mediums, and Misfits Who Brought Spiritualism to America.
Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning are without parallel in the nineteenth century: celebrated poets, they became equally famous for their marriage. Still popular more than a century after their deaths, their poetry vividly reflects the unique nature of their relationship.
This collection presents the Brownings’ work in the context of their lives: the early years and their initial friendship, their courtship and marriage, the fifteen happy years they spent living in Italy until Elizabeth’s death. Whether in short poems such as Elizabeth’s “Hector in the Garden” and Robert’s “Natural Magic,” or in extracts from longer works such as Aurora Leigh and Pauline, the great themes they shared are all represented: love, marriage, illicit passion, England and Italy, childhood, religion, poetry, and nature. Elizabeth’s famous Sonnets from the Portuguese, based on their love affair, is included in its entirety.
The poems are augmented with a generous selection of the marvelous letters the Brownings wrote to each other.
Foreword | 9 | |
Robert Browning | ||
Love | 13 | |
Love in a Life | 14 | |
Life in a Love | 15 | |
One Way of Love | 16 | |
Another Way of Love | 17 | |
Cristina | 19 | |
Porphyria's Lover | 22 | |
From Pauline | 25 | |
The Lost Mistress | 28 | |
My Last Duchess | 29 | |
Evelyn Hope | 32 | |
Never the Time and the Place | 35 | |
Now | 36 | |
Meeting at Night | 37 | |
Parting at Morning | 37 | |
Up at a Villa - Down in the City | 38 | |
A Serenade at the Villa | 43 | |
A Toccata of Galuppi's | 46 | |
Love among the Ruins | 50 | |
Two in the Campagna | 54 | |
'De Gustibus-' | 57 | |
A Light Woman | 59 | |
In Three Days | 62 | |
In a Year | 64 | |
Time's Revenges | 68 | |
Popularity | 71 | |
Memorabilia | 74 | |
How it Strikes a Contemporary | 75 | |
My Star | 80 | |
Fame | 81 | |
The Lost Leader | 82 | |
Misconceptions | 84 | |
Inapprehensiveness | 85 | |
Dubiety | 87 | |
Respectability | 89 | |
Humility | 90 | |
Summum Bonum | 91 | |
Speculative | 92 | |
In the Doorway | 93 | |
May and Death | 95 | |
Home-thoughts, from Abroad | 96 | |
Prospice | 97 | |
A Face | 99 | |
Magical Nature | 100 | |
Natural Magic | 101 | |
White Witchcraft | 102 | |
House | 103 | |
Appearances | 105 | |
Elizabeth Barrett Browning | ||
Question and Answer | 109 | |
A Woman's Shortcomings | 110 | |
A Man's Requirements | 112 | |
A Sea-side Walk | 114 | |
To Flush, My Dog | 116 | |
Flush or Faunus | 121 | |
Grief | 122 | |
Discontent | 123 | |
Patience Taught by Nature | 124 | |
The Weakest Thing | 125 | |
A Dead Rose | 126 | |
A Denial | 128 | |
The Measure: Hymn IV | 131 | |
A Child's Thought of God | 133 | |
Hector in the Garden | 134 | |
Hiram Powers's Greek Slave | 139 | |
Amy's Cruelty | 140 | |
The North and the South | 143 | |
From Heine | 145 | |
A Musical Instrument | 149 | |
A View Across the Roman Campagna | 151 | |
'Died...' | 153 | |
From Aurora Leigh | 155 | |
Sonnets from the Portuguese | 175 | |
The Best Thing in the World | 200 | |
Letters | 201 | |
Robert Browning: Epilogue | 251 | |
Index of First Lines | 252 |