85-614: Dramatic Lyrics is a collection of English poems by Robert Browning , first published in 1842 as the third volume in a series of self-published books entitled Bells and Pomegranates . It is most famous as the first appearance of Browning's poem The Pied Piper of Hamelin , but also contains several of the poet's other best-known pieces, including My Last Duchess , Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister , Porphyria's Lover , and Johannes Agricola in Meditation . Many of
170-770: A Liberal , supported the emancipation of women, and opposed slavery, expressing sympathy for the North in the American Civil War . Later in life, he even championed animal rights in several poems attacking vivisection. He was also a stalwart opponent of anti-Semitism, leading to speculation that Browning himself was Jewish. In 1877 he wrote a poem explaining "Why I am a Liberal" in which he declared: "Who then dares hold – emancipated thus / His fellow shall continue bound? Not I." Critical attention to Browning's politics has, in general, been sparse. Isobel Armstrong 's writing on dramatic monologues, as well as more recent work on
255-486: A tour de force of dramatic poetry. Published in four parts from November 1868 to February 1869, the poem was a success both commercially and critically, and finally brought Browning the renown he had sought for nearly 40 years. The Robert Browning Society was formed in 1881 and his work was recognised as belonging within the British literary canon. In the remaining years of his life Browning travelled extensively. After
340-429: A Christian". Poems such as "Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day" seem to confirm this Christian faith, strengthened by his wife. However, many have dismissed the usefulness of these works at discovering Browning's own religious views due to the consistent use of dramatic monologue which regularly expresses hypothetical views which cannot be ascribed to the author himself. Now, don't, sir! Don't expose me! Just this once! This
425-495: A Spanish Cloister . Ian Jack , in his introduction to the Oxford University Press edition of Browning's poems 1833–1864, comments that Thomas Hardy , Rudyard Kipling , Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot "all learned from Browning's exploration of the possibilities of dramatic poetry and of colloquial idiom". In Oscar Wilde's dialogue The Critic as Artist , Browning is given a famously ironical assessment: "He
510-470: A century and a half. Culturally, in England and Wales , discrimination against Nonconformists endured even longer. Presbyterians , Congregationalists , Baptists , Calvinists , other "reformed" groups and less organised sects were identified as Nonconformists at the time of the 1662 Act of Uniformity. Following the act, other groups, including Methodists , Unitarians , Quakers , Plymouth Brethren , and
595-586: A collection of written poetry is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Robert Browning Robert Browning (7 May 1812 – 12 December 1889) was an English poet and playwright whose dramatic monologues put him high among the Victorian poets . He was noted for irony , characterization , dark humour , social commentary , historical settings and challenging vocabulary and syntax . His early long poems Pauline (1833) and Paracelsus (1835) were acclaimed, but his reputation dwindled for
680-559: A great part of the more active members of society, who have the most intercourse with the people have the most influence over them, are Protestant Dissenters. These are manufacturers, merchants and substantial tradesman, or persons who are in the enjoyment of a competency realised by trade, commerce and manufacturers, gentlemen of the professions of law and physic, and agriculturalists, of that class particularly who live upon their own freehold. The virtues of temperance, frugality, prudence and integrity promoted by religious Nonconformity...assist
765-564: A major role in English politics. In a political context, historians distinguish between two categories of Dissenters, in addition to the evangelical element in the Church of England. "Old Dissenters", dating from the 16th and 17th centuries, included Baptists , Congregationalists , Quakers , Unitarians , and Presbyterians outside Scotland. "New Dissenters" emerged in the 18th century and were mainly Methodists. The " Nonconformist conscience "
850-413: A muck With this old world, for want of strife Sound asleep: contrive, contrive To rouse us, Waring! Who's alive? Our men scarce seem in earnest now: Distinguished names!—but 'tis, somehow, As if they played at being names Still more distinguished, like the games Of children. Bells and Pomegranates No. III: Dramatic Lyrics (1842) In March 1833, " Pauline, a Fragment of a Confession "
935-703: A musical setting of Prospice in 1894 for baritone and string quartet. Stephen Banfield rates it highly among musical settings of Browning, calling it "one of his few very powerful compositions". It has been recorded by Martin Oxenham and the Bingham String Quartet. In 1914, the American modernist composer Charles Ives created the Robert Browning Overture , a dense and darkly dramatic piece with gloomy overtones reminiscent of
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#17327839794701020-463: A non- Anglican church or a non-Christian religion. More broadly, any person who advocated religious liberty was typically called out as Nonconformist. The strict religious tests embodied in the laws of the Clarendon Code and other penal laws excluded a substantial section of English society from public affairs and benefits, including certification of university degrees, for well more than
1105-489: A registrar was present. Also in 1836, civil registration of births, deaths and marriages was taken from the hands of local parish officials and given to local government registrars. Burial of the dead was a more troubling problem, for urban chapels rarely had graveyards, and sought to use the traditional graveyards controlled by the established church. The Burial Laws Amendment Act 1880 finally allowed this. Oxford University required students seeking admission to submit to
1190-493: A result of his new contacts he met Macready , who invited him to write a play. Strafford was performed five times. Browning then wrote two other plays, one of which was not performed, while the other failed, Browning having fallen out with Macready. In 1838, he visited Italy looking for background for Sordello , a long poem in heroic couplets, presented as the imaginary biography of the Mantuan bard spoken of by Dante in
1275-632: A series of disabilities on Nonconformists that prevented them from holding most public offices, that required them to pay local taxes to the Anglican church, be married by Anglican ministers, and be denied attendance at Oxford or degrees at Cambridge. Dissenters demanded removal of political and civil disabilities that applied to them (especially those in the Test and Corporation Acts). The Anglican establishment strongly resisted until 1828. The Test Act 1673 made it illegal for anyone not receiving communion in
1360-597: A series of long poems published in the early 1870s, of which Balaustion's Adventure and Red Cotton Night-Cap Country were the best-received, the volume Pacchiarotto, and How He Worked in Distemper included an attack against Browning's critics, especially Alfred Austin , who was later to become Poet Laureate . According to some reports Browning became romantically involved with Louisa Caroline Stewart-Mackenzie , Lady Ashburton, but he refused her proposal of marriage, and did not remarry. In 1878, he revisited Italy for
1445-453: A spirit face materialized, which Home claimed was Browning's son who had died in infancy: Browning seized the "materialization" and discovered it to be Home's bare foot. To make the deception worse, Browning had never lost a son in infancy. After the séance, Browning wrote an angry letter to The Times , in which he said: "the whole display of hands, spirit utterances etc., was a cheat and imposture." In 1902 Browning's son Pen wrote: "Home
1530-581: A success and brought popular fame to the couple in the United States. The role of Elizabeth became a signature role for the actress Katharine Cornell . It was twice adapted into film. It was also the basis of the stage musical Robert and Elizabeth , with music by Ron Grainer and book and lyrics by Ronald Millar . Browning is an important character in Michael Dibdin 's 1986 novel A rich full death . "God's in his heaven – All's right in
1615-405: A time – his 1840 poem Sordello was seen as wilfully obscure – and took over a decade to recover, by which time he had moved from Shelleyan forms to a more personal style. In 1846, he married fellow poet Elizabeth Barrett and moved to Italy. By her death in 1861, he had published the collection Men and Women (1855). His Dramatis Personae (1864) and book-length epic poem The Ring and
1700-427: Is his involuntary unfolding of one of the largest, most enigmatic, and most multipersoned literary and human selves you can hope to encounter." More recently, critics such as Annmarie Drury, Hédi A. Jaouad, and Joseph Hankinson have shifted to focus on Browning's surprising receptivity to other cultures, languages, and literary traditions. His work has nevertheless had many detractors, and most of his voluminous output
1785-455: Is more" ( Andrea Del Sarto ), "It was roses, roses all the way" ( The Patriot ), and "God's in His heaven—All's right with the world!" ( Pippa Passes ). His critical reputation has traditionally rested mainly on his dramatic monologues , in which the words not only convey setting and action but reveal the speaker's character. In a Browning monologue, unlike a soliloquy , the meaning is not what
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#17327839794701870-406: Is not widely read. In a largely hostile essay Anthony Burgess wrote: "We all want to like Browning, but we find it very hard." Gerard Manley Hopkins and George Santayana were also critical. The latter expressed his views in the essay "The Poetry of Barbarism", which attacks Browning and Walt Whitman for what he regarded as their embrace of irrationality. The young Henry Walford Davies made
1955-545: Is the most Shakespearean creature since Shakespeare. If Shakespeare could sing with myriad lips, Browning could stammer through a thousand mouths. [...] Yes, Browning was great. And as what will he be remembered? As a poet? Ah, not as a poet! He will be remembered as a writer of fiction, as the most supreme writer of fiction, it may be, that we have ever had. His sense of dramatic situation was unrivalled, and, if he could not answer his own problems, he could at least put problems forth, and what more should an artist do? Considered from
2040-449: Is the most considerable poet in English since the major Romantics, surpassing his great contemporary rival Tennyson and the principal twentieth-century poets, including even Yeats , Hardy , and Wallace Stevens . But Browning is a very difficult poet, notoriously badly served by criticism , and ill-served also by his own accounts of what he was doing as a poet.... Yet when you read your way into his world, precisely his largest gift to you
2125-580: Is used in a broader sense to refer to Christians who are not communicants of a majority national church , such as the Lutheran Church of Sweden . The Act of Uniformity 1662 required churchmen to use all rites and ceremonies as prescribed in the Book of Common Prayer . It also required episcopal ordination of all ministers of the Church of England—a pronouncement most odious to the Puritans ,
2210-468: The Church of England . He had inherited substantial musical ability through his mother, and composed arrangements of various songs. He refused a formal career and ignored his parents' remonstrations by dedicating himself to poetry. He stayed at home until the age of 34, financially dependent on his family until his marriage. His father sponsored the publication of his son's poems. Some one shall somehow run
2295-597: The Divine Comedy , canto 6 of Purgatory, set against a background of hate and conflict during the wars of the Guelphs and Ghibellines . This was published in 1840 and met with widespread derision, gaining him the reputation of wanton carelessness and obscurity. Tennyson, jokingly, commented that he only understood the first and last lines. Jane Welsh Carlyle , wife of Thomas Carlyle (a friend of Browning's who deeply influenced Browning's poetry), quipped that she read
2380-542: The English Moravians were officially labelled as Nonconformists as they became organised. The term dissenter later came into particular use after the Act of Toleration 1689 , which exempted those Nonconformists who had taken oaths of allegiance from being penalised for certain acts, such as for non-attendance at Church of England services. A census of religion in 1851 revealed Nonconformists made up about half
2465-737: The Irish Catholics in an otherwise unlikely alliance. The Nonconformist conscience was also repeatedly called upon by Gladstone for support for his moralistic foreign policy. In election after election, Protestant ministers rallied their congregations to the Liberal ticket. (In Scotland, the Presbyterians played a similar role to the Nonconformist Methodists, Baptists and other groups in England and Wales.) Many of
2550-475: The Second Viennese School . In 1917, the U.S. composer Margaret Hoberg Turrell composed a song based on Browning's poem "Love: Such a Starved Bank of Moss". In 1920, the U.S. composer Anne Stratton composed one based on Browning's poem "Parting at Morning". In 1930, the story of Browning and his wife was made into the play The Barretts of Wimpole Street , by Rudolph Besier . It was
2635-626: The Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England. Cambridge University required that for a diploma. The two ancient universities opposed giving a charter to the new London University in the 1830s, because it had no such restriction. London University, nevertheless, was established in 1836, and by the 1850s Oxford dropped its restrictions. In 1871 Gladstone sponsored legislation that provided full access to degrees and fellowships. The Scottish universities never had restrictions. Since 1660, Dissenters, later Nonconformists, have played
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2720-593: The West Indies to work on a sugar plantation but returned to England following a slave revolt. Browning's mother was the daughter of a German shipowner who had settled in Dundee , Scotland and his Scottish wife. His paternal grandmother, Margaret Tittle, had inherited a plantation in St Kitts and was rumoured in the family to have a mixed-race ancestry including some Jamaican blood, but author Julia Markus suggests she
2805-552: The 20th century, until only pockets of nonconformist religiosity remained in England. Nonconformity in Wales can be traced to the Welsh Methodist revival ; Wales effectively had become a Nonconformist country by the mid-19th century; nonconformist chapel attendance significantly outnumbered Anglican church attendance. They were based in the fast-growing upwardly mobile urban middle class. The influence of Nonconformism in
2890-664: The Book (1868–1869) made him a leading poet. By his death in 1889, he was seen as a sage and philosopher-poet who had fed into Victorian social and political discourse. Societies for studying his work survived in Britain and the US into the 20th century. Browning was born in Walworth in the parish of Camberwell , Surrey, which now forms part of the Borough of Southwark in south London. He
2975-475: The Church of England to hold office under the crown. The Corporation Act 1661 did likewise for offices in municipal government . Although the Test and Corporation Acts remained on the statute-book, in practice they were not enforced against Protestant nonconformists due to the passage of various Indemnity Acts , in particular the Indemnity Act 1727 , which relieved Nonconformists from the requirements in
3060-672: The Nonconformists elected to Parliament were Liberals. Relatively few MPs were Dissenters. However the Dissenters were major voting bloc in many areas, such as the East Midlands. They were very well organised and highly motivated and largely won over the Whigs and Liberals to their cause. Gladstone brought the majority of Dissenters around to support for Home Rule for Ireland , putting the dissenting Protestants in league with
3145-629: The Old group supported mostly Whigs and Liberals in politics, while the New, like most Anglicans, generally supported Conservatives . By the late 19th century, the New Dissenters had mostly switched to the Liberal Party. The result was a merging of the two groups, strengthening their great weight as a political pressure group. After the Test and Corporation Acts were repealed in 1828 , all
3230-707: The Test Act 1673 and the Corporation Act 1661 that public office holders must have taken the sacrament of the Lord's Supper in an Anglican church. In 1732, Nonconformists in the City of London created an association, the Dissenting Deputies to secure repeal of the Test and Corporation acts. The Deputies became a sophisticated pressure group, and worked with liberal Whigs to achieve repeal in 1828. It
3315-399: The death of his wife in 1861. His father encouraged his children's interest in literature and the arts. By the age of 12, Browning had written a book of poetry, which he later destroyed for want of a publisher. After attending one or two private schools and showing an insuperable dislike of school life, he was educated at home by a tutor, using the resources of his father's library. By 14 he
3400-613: The early part of the 20th century, boosted by the 1904–1905 Welsh Revival , led to the disestablishment of the Anglican Church in Wales in 1920 and the formation of the Church in Wales . In other countries, the term Nonconformist is used in a broader sense to refer to Christians who are not communicants of a majority national church , such as the Lutheran Church of Sweden . The largest Nonconformist church in Sweden,
3485-622: The faction of the church which had come to dominance during the English Civil War and the Interregnum . Consequently, nearly 2,000 clergymen were "ejected" from the established church for refusing to comply with the provisions of the act, an event referred to as the Great Ejection . The Great Ejection created an abiding public consciousness of nonconformity. Thereafter, a Nonconformist was any English subject belonging to
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3570-529: The first MPs elected for the Labour Party in the 1900s were also nonconformists. Nonconformists were angered by the Education Act 1902 , which provided for the support of denominational schools from taxes. The elected local school boards that they largely controlled were abolished and replaced by county-level local education authorities that were usually controlled by Anglicans. Worst of all
3655-532: The first time in the seventeen years since Elizabeth's death, and returned there on several further occasions. In 1887, Browning produced the major work of his later years, Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in Their Day . It finally presented the poet speaking in his own voice, engaging in a series of dialogues with long-forgotten figures of literary, artistic, and philosophic history. The Victorian public
3740-500: The hated Anglican schools would now receive funding from local taxes that everyone had to pay. One tactic was to refuse to pay local taxes. John Clifford formed the National Passive Resistance Committee . By 1904 over 37,000 summonses for unpaid school taxes were issued, with thousands having their property seized and 80 protesters going to prison. It operated for another decade but had no impact on
3825-486: The household, religion, and moral behaviour. Religiosity was in the female sphere, and the Nonconformist churches offered new roles that women eagerly entered. They taught Sunday school , visited the poor and sick, distributed tracts, engaged in fundraising, supported missionaries, led Methodist class meetings , prayed with other women, and a few were allowed to preach to mixed audiences. Parliament had imposed
3910-439: The influence of Coriolanus on Browning's politics, has attempted to situate the poet's political sensibility at the centre of his practice. Browning was raised in an evangelical non-conformist household. However, after his reading of Shelley he is said to have briefly become an atheist. Browning is also said to have made an uncharacteristic admission of faith to Alfred Domett, when he is said to have admired Byron's poetry "as
3995-466: The late 19th century the new terms " free church " and "Free churchman" (or "Free church person") started to replace "Nonconformist" or "Dissenter". One influential Nonconformist minister was Matthew Henry , who beginning in 1710 published his multi-volume biblical commentary that is still used and available in the 21st century. Isaac Watts is an equally recognised Nonconformist minister whose hymns are still sung by Christians worldwide. The term
4080-590: The length and difficulty of his most ambitious poems, particularly Sordello and, to a lesser extent, The Ring and the Book . Nevertheless, they have included such eminent writers as Henry James , Oscar Wilde , George Bernard Shaw , G. K. Chesterton , Ezra Pound , Graham Greene , Evelyn Waugh , Jorge Luis Borges , and Vladimir Nabokov . Among living writers, Stephen King 's The Dark Tower series, A. S. Byatt 's Possession , and Maggie O'Farrell 's The Marriage Portrait refer directly to Browning's work. Today Browning's critically most esteemed poems include
4165-613: The linkage between the Nonconformists and Liberal Party was weakening, as secularisation reduced the strength of Dissent in English political life. Today, Protestant churches independent of the Anglican Church of England or the Presbyterian Church of Scotland are often called " free churches ", meaning they are free from state control. This term is used interchangeably with "Nonconformist". The steady pace of secularisation picked up faster and faster during
4250-559: The monologues Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came , Fra Lippo Lippi , Andrea Del Sarto , and My Last Duchess . His most popular poems include Porphyria's Lover , How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix , the diptych Meeting at Night , the patriotic Home Thoughts from Abroad , and the children's poem The Pied Piper of Hamelin . His abortive dinner-party recital of How They Brought The Good News
4335-521: The number of people who attended church services on Sundays. In the larger manufacturing areas, Nonconformists clearly outnumbered members of the Church of England. Nonconformists in the 18th and 19th century claimed a devotion to hard work, temperance, frugality, and upward mobility, with which historians today largely agree. A major Unitarian magazine, the Christian Monthly Repository asserted in 1827: Throughout England
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#17327839794704420-455: The original titles given by Browning to the poems in this collection, as with its "follow-up" collection Dramatic Romances and Lyrics , are different from the ones he later gave them in various editions of his collected works. Since this book was originally self-published in a very small edition, these poems are now always referred to by their later titles. The poems were written between 1836 (possibly late 1835) and 1842. This article about
4505-408: The poem is composed of 12 books: essentially 10 lengthy dramatic monologues narrated by various characters in the story, showing their individual perspectives on events, bookended by an introduction and conclusion by Browning himself. Long even by Browning's standards (over twenty-thousand lines), The Ring and the Book was his most ambitious project and is arguably his greatest work; it has been called
4590-472: The poem through and "could not tell whether Sordello was a [sic] 'a book, a city, or a man'". Browning's reputation began to make a partial recovery with the publication, 1841–1846, of Bells and Pomegranates , a series of eight pamphlets, originally intended just to include his plays. Fortunately for Browning's career, his publisher, Moxon, persuaded him to include some "dramatic lyrics", some of which had already appeared in periodicals. In 1845, Browning met
4675-510: The poems that eventually composed his two-volume Men and Women , for which he is now well known, although in 1855, when they were published, they made relatively little impact. In 1861, Elizabeth died in Florence. Among those whom he found consoling in that period was the novelist and poet Isa Blagden , with whom he and his wife had a voluminous correspondence. The following year Browning returned to London, taking Pen with him, who by then
4760-616: The poet Elizabeth Barrett , six years his senior, who lived as a semi-invalid in her father's house in Wimpole Street , London. They began regularly corresponding and gradually a romance developed between them, leading to their marriage and journey to Italy (for Elizabeth's health) on 12 September 1846. The marriage was initially secret because Elizabeth's domineering father disapproved of marriage for any of his children. Mr. Barrett disinherited Elizabeth, as he did each of his children who married: "The Mrs. Browning of popular imagination
4845-416: The point of view of a creator of character he ranks next to him who made Hamlet . Had he been articulate, he might have sat beside him. The only man who can touch the hem of his garment is George Meredith . Meredith is a prose Browning, and so is Browning. He used poetry as a medium for writing in prose." Probably the most adulatory judgment of Browning by a modern critic comes from Harold Bloom : "Browning
4930-445: The recording, which still exists, Browning recites part of How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix (and can be heard apologising when he forgets the words). When the recording was played in 1890 on the anniversary of his death, at a gathering of his admirers, it was said to be the first time anyone's voice "had been heard from beyond the grave." Browning's admirers have tended to temper their praise with reservations about
5015-571: The school system. The education issue played a major role in the Liberal victory in the 1906 general election , as Dissenter Conservatives punished their old party and voted Liberal. After 1906, a Liberal attempt to modify the law was blocked by the Conservative -dominated House of Lords ; after 1911 when the Lords had been stripped of its veto over legislation, the issue was no longer of high enough priority to produce Liberal action. By 1914
5100-422: The speaker voluntarily reveals but what he inadvertently gives away, usually while rationalising past actions or special pleading his case to a silent auditor. These monologues have been influential, and today the best of them are often treated by teachers and lecturers as paradigm cases of the monologue form. One such example used by teachers today is his satirisation of the sadistic attitude in his Soliloquy in
5185-412: The temporal prosperity of these descriptions of persons, as they tend also to lift others to the same rank in society. The emerging middle-class norm was for women to be excluded from the public sphere—the domain of politics, paid work, commerce and public speaking. Instead, it was considered that women should dominate in the realm of domestic life, focused on care of the family, the husband, the children,
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#17327839794705270-421: The vendor's string, And broad-edge bold-print posters by the wall. He took such cognizance of men and things, If any beat a horse, you felt he saw; If any cursed a woman, he took note; Yet stared at nobody—you stared at him, And found, less to your pleasure than surprise, He seemed to know you and expect as much. Men and Women (1855) In Florence, probably from early in 1853, Browning worked on
5355-421: The volumes in which they were published. (His only notable prose work, with the exception of his letters, is his Essay on Shelley .) Nonconformist (Protestantism) Nonconformists were Protestant Christians who did not "conform" to the governance and usages of the established church in England, and in Wales until 1914, the Church of England . Use of the term Nonconformist in England and Wales
5440-642: The work. Allan Cunningham praised it in the Athenaeum . However, it sold no copies. Some years later, probably in 1850, Dante Gabriel Rossetti came across it in the Reading Room of the British Museum and wrote to Browning, then in Florence , to ask if he was the author. John Stuart Mill , however, wrote that the author suffered from an "intense and morbid self-consciousness". Later Browning
5525-509: The world", an excerpt from his poem, Pippa Passes, is the slogan for the fictional organisation NERV from Hideaki Anno 's 1995 anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion . A memorial plaque on the site of Browning's London home, in Warwick Crescent, Maida Vale , was unveiled on 11 December 1993. This section lists the plays and volumes of poetry Browning published in his lifetime. Some individually notable poems are also listed, under
5610-430: Was Kittitian rather than Jamaican. The evidence is inconclusive. Robert's father, a literary collector, had a library of some 6,000 books; many of them were rare so that Robert grew up in a household with significant literary resources. His mother, to whom he was close, was a devout nonconformist and a talented musician. His younger sister, Sarianna, also gifted, became her brother's companion in his later years, after
5695-679: Was "Dissenter" (the term earlier used in England), commonly referring to Irish Presbyterians who dissented from the approved Anglican communion. English Dissenters such as the Puritans who violated the Act of Uniformity 1558 – typically by practising radical, sometimes separatist , dissent – were retrospectively labelled as Nonconformists. By law and social custom, Nonconformists were restricted from many spheres of public life – not least, from access to public office, civil service careers, or degrees at university – and were referred to as suffering from civil disabilities . In England and Wales in
5780-480: Was 12 years old. They made their home in 17 Warwick Crescent , Maida Vale . It was only when he became part of the London literary scene—albeit while paying frequent visits to Italy (though never again to Florence)—that his reputation started to take off. In 1868, after five years' work, he completed and published the long blank-verse poem The Ring and the Book . Based on a convoluted murder-case from 1690s Rome,
5865-439: Was a major achievement for an outside group, but the Dissenters were not finished. Next on the agenda was the matter of church rates , which were local taxes at the parish level for the support of the parish church building in England and Wales. Only buildings of the established church received the tax money. Civil disobedience was attempted but was met with seizure of personal property and even imprisonment. The compulsory factor
5950-566: Was a serious contender to become Poet Laureate , the position eventually going to Tennyson . From the time of their marriage and until Elizabeth's death, the Brownings lived in Italy, residing first in Pisa , and then, within a year, finding an apartment in Florence at Casa Guidi (now a museum to their memory). Their only child, Robert Wiedemann Barrett Browning , nicknamed "Penini" or "Pen",
6035-471: Was a sweet, innocent young woman who suffered endless cruelties at the hands of a tyrannical papa but who nonetheless had the good fortune to fall in love with a dashing and handsome poet named Robert Browning." At her husband's insistence, the second edition of Elizabeth's Poems included her love sonnets. The book increased her popularity and high critical regard, cementing her position as an eminent Victorian poet. Upon William Wordsworth 's death in 1850, she
6120-590: Was baffled by this, and Browning returned to the brief, concise lyric for his last volume, Asolando (1889), published on the day of his death. Browning died at his son's home Ca' Rezzonico in Venice on 12 December 1889. He was buried in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey ; his grave now lies immediately adjacent to that of Alfred Tennyson . During his life Browning was awarded many distinctions. He
6205-516: Was baptised on 14 June 1812, at Lock's Fields Independent Chapel, York Street, Walworth, the only son of Sarah Anna (née Wiedemann) and Robert Browning. His father was a well-paid clerk for the Bank of England , earning about £150 per year. Browning's paternal grandfather was a slave owner in Saint Kitts, West Indies , but Browning's father was an abolitionist . Browning's father had been sent to
6290-511: Was born in 1849. In these years Browning was fascinated by, and learned from, the art and atmosphere of Italy. He would, in later life, describe Italy as his university. As Elizabeth had inherited money of her own, the couple were reasonably comfortable in Italy, and their relationship together was happy. However, the literary assault on Browning's work did not let up and he was critically dismissed further, by patrician writers such as Charles Kingsley , for deserting England. Browning identified as
6375-462: Was detected in a vulgar fraud." Elizabeth, however, was convinced that the phenomena she witnessed were genuine, and her discussions about Home with her husband were a constant source of disagreement. He stood and watched the cobbler at his trade, The man who slices lemons into drink, The coffee-roaster's brazier , and the boys That volunteer to help him turn its winch. He glanced o'er books on stalls with half an eye, And fly-leaf ballads on
6460-421: Was finally abolished in 1868 by William Ewart Gladstone , and payment was made voluntary. While Gladstone was a moralistic evangelical inside the Church of England, he had strong support in the Nonconformist community. The marriage question was settled by Marriage Act 1836 which allowed local government registrars to handle marriages. Nonconformist ministers in their own chapels were allowed to marry couples if
6545-509: Was fluent in French, Greek , Italian and Latin. He became an admirer of the Romantic poets , especially Shelley , whom he followed in becoming an atheist and a vegetarian. At 16, he studied Greek at University College London , but left after his first year. His parents' evangelical faith prevented his studying at either Oxford or Cambridge University , both then open only to members of
6630-479: Was made LL.D. of Edinburgh, a life Governor of London University, and had the offer of the Lord Rectorship of Glasgow . But he turned down anything that involved public speaking. At a dinner party on 7 April 1889, at the home of Browning's friend the artist Rudolf Lehmann , an Edison cylinder phonograph recording was made on a white wax cylinder by Edison 's British representative, George Gouraud . In
6715-614: Was precipitated after the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660, when the Act of Uniformity 1662 renewed opposition to reforms within the established church. By the late 19th century the term specifically included other Reformed Christians ( Presbyterians and Congregationalists ), plus the Baptists , Brethren , Methodists , and Quakers . In Ireland, the comparable term until the Church of Ireland 's disestablishment in 1869
6800-491: Was probably suggested to him by the Comte Amédée de Ripart-Monclar, to whom it was dedicated. The publication had some commercial and critical success, being noticed by Wordsworth , Dickens , Landor , J. S. Mill and the already famous Tennyson . It is a monodrama without action, dealing with the problems confronting an intellectual trying to find his role in society. It gained him access to the London literary world. As
6885-565: Was published anonymously by Saunders and Otley at the expense of the author, Robert Browning, who received the money from his aunt, Mrs Silverthorne. It is a long poem composed in homage to the poet Shelley and somewhat in his style. Originally Browning considered Pauline as the first of a series written by different aspects of himself, but he soon abandoned this idea. The press noticed the publication. W. J. Fox writing in The Monthly Repository of April 1833 discerned merit in
6970-550: Was rather embarrassed by the work, and only included it in his collected poems of 1868 after making substantial changes and adding a preface in which he asked for indulgence for a boyish work. In 1834, he accompanied the Chevalier George de Benkhausen, the Russian consul-general, on a brief visit to St Petersburg and began Paracelsus , which was published in 1835. The subject of the 16th-century savant and alchemist
7055-616: Was recorded on an Edison wax cylinder , and is believed to be one of the oldest surviving recordings made in the United Kingdom of a notable person (a recording of Sir Arthur Sullivan 's voice was made about six months earlier). Browning is now popularly known for such poems as Porphyria's Lover , My Last Duchess , How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix , and The Pied Piper of Hamelin , and also for certain famous lines: "Grow old along with me!" ( Rabbi Ben Ezra ), "A man's reach should exceed his grasp" and "Less
7140-618: Was the first and only time, I'll swear,— Look at me,—see, I kneel,—the only time, I swear, I ever cheated,—yes, by the soul Of Her who hears—(your sainted mother, sir!) All, except this last accident, was truth— This little kind of slip!—and even this, It was your own wine, sir, the good champagne, (I took it for Catawba —you're so kind) Which put the folly in my head! Dramatis Personae (1864) Browning believed spiritualism to be fraud, and proved one of Daniel Dunglas Home 's most adamant critics. When Browning and his wife Elizabeth attended one of his séances on 23 July 1855,
7225-463: Was their moral sensibility which they tried to implement in British politics. The "Nonconformist conscience" of the Old group emphasised religious freedom and equality, pursuit of justice, and opposition to discrimination, compulsion, and coercion. The New Dissenters (and also the Anglican evangelicals) stressed personal morality issues, including sexuality, family values, and temperance . Both factions were politically active, but until mid-19th century
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