Robert Browning: Some Glimpses from his Life & Works

Robert Browning: Some Glimpses from his Life & Works

Robert Browning, best known for his dramatic monologues, was an eminent poet of the nineteenth century. He did not achieve fame all of a sudden. In fact, he had to struggle to make his name shine in the galaxy of the poets of eminence in English Literature.

Let’s have a microscopic view of his life of works.

He was born on May 7, 1812 in Camberwell, London. His father was a senior clerk in a bank and mother an excellent pianist (/ˈpiː.ən.ɪst/ ) and there would be no exaggeration if we say that he inherited love for music from his mother. He developed his love for reading books because there was his father’s a big library in the house.

He wrote his first poem Pauline A Fragment of a Confession in 1833, when he was too young, so the poem proved to be an open expression of his feelings. In a way, he lays his soul bare to a patient heroine.

J. S. Mill (John Stuart Mill) commented on this poem: “…that the poet in this poem possessed with a more intense and morbid self-consciousness than I ever knew in any sane human being.”

These lines forced Robert Browning to think about the short-comings that J. S. Mill had pointed out. He decided never to be personal so much openly in his poems.  He would only “make men and women speak” in his poems.

He proved his promise in his next long poem Paracelsus (1835). The hero in this poem was a Renaissance Alchemist (one who produces chemicals)

Browning called this poem ‘a failure’ and in spite of that, he received favourable reviews. He gained friendship with the authors like William Wordsworth, Thomas Carlyle and with actor William C. Macready.

It gave Robert Browning a moral boost to expand his social circle. The actor William C. Macready encouraged him to try his pen in writing drama verses. Thus, he wrote his first drama Strafford (1837) and it could not have more than five performances. In all, he wrote six dramas and it took his ten years more. But none of them could bring sufficient success to him. His  another poem Sordello, written in 1840, too, was a failure. It gave a big blow to his growing reputation. Critics called the poem in a voice obscure (unintelligible) and unreadable. Even the poem is understandable for the modern reader.

The failure of Strafford and Sordello forced Robert Browning to shift to another genre of writing i. e. drama verses. Thus we had successful poems like Pippa Passes (1841) and two collections of shorter poems, Dramatic Lyrics (1842) and Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1845)

His dramatic monologues are usually written in blank verse.

My Last Duchess, Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister, The Bishop orders His Tomb, The Last Ride Together, Rabbi ben Ezra, Andrea del Sarto, etc.

Robert Browning was married to Elizabeth Barrette. 

In May 1845, he met her and very soon they discovered love for each other. Both the lovers had to marry secretly because Elizabeth Barrette’s father was against their marriage.

Browning’s mature poetry came in 1855 with the publication of Man and Woman, a collection of 51 poems. It made him the idol of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

After that, his health kept declining for several years. Elizabeth Barrette Browning died on June 29, 1861. After that, he left Florence and came to live in England.

He published Dramatis Personae in 1864. It spite of some of the dramatic monologues to be complex and overlong, this was the first of Browning’s works that succeeded to become popular with the readers.

His popularity increased with the publication of The Ring and the Book in 1868-1869. This poem was a long dramatic  narrative poem in 12 books. This book was enthusiastically received by the public. Robert Browning became a prominent figure in London society. He was now a frequent guest at dinners, concerts and receptions.

In the next ten years, he published a volume almost every year. By 1870, he had achieved equal status with Tennyson, the poet laureate.

Although Browning could not receive his due in his own time, yet he is very popular with the modern readers. For this, credit goes to Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot.

He died on Dec 12, 1889 at his son’s home in Venice.

In the epilogue to his last collection of lyrics, Browning described himself as “One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, never doubted clouds would break, …”