Robert Browning - Selected Writings

This volume in the 21st-Century Oxford Authors series offers students and readers a comprehensive selection of the work of Robert Browning (1812-1889). Accompanied by full scholarly apparatus, this is the first one-volume fully annotated edition of Browning's poetry. It presents work written across the breadth of his career, from the very first poem he published, Pauline, to Asolando, the volume that was published on the day that he died.

The text chosen is, wherever possible, the text of the poem as it was first published by Browning himself, and as a consequence the volume also constitutes a kind of biography that enables students to understand Browning's development over the course of his life. The edition reveals a poet who began as a bold experimentalist, and who continued to experiment throughout a writing career of more than fifty years. Browning is best known for his dramatic monologues, and the dramatic monologues are fully represented in this volume, but he was also a narrative poet, a poet of philosophical reflection, and a poet who fashioned an extraordinary variety of lyric measures. This volume reveals Browning as a far more versatile poet than he is often taken to be. There are two important prose items, an essay on Shelley and a letter to Ruskin which clarify Browning's intellectual stance. The Notes include brief headnotes to each poem followed by detailed annotation, and they assist the reader in developing a full understanding of these masterful poems.

Explanatory notes and commentary are included, to enhance the study, understanding, and enjoyment of these works, and the edition includes an Introduction to the life and works of Browning, and a Chronology.

List of contents

• Acknowledgements


• List of Illustrations


• List of Abbreviations


• Introduction


• Chronology


• A Note on the Selection and Its Ordering


• PAULINE: A FRAGMENT OF A CONFESSION (1833)


• FROM THE MONTHLY REPOSITORY, VOL. X, N.S. 1836, 43-44; 45-46


• [Porphyria's Lover] Porphyria


• [Johannes Agricola in Meditation] Johannes


• BELLS AND POMEGRANATES, NO. I, PIPPA PASSES, (1841)


• Pippa Passes


• FROM BELLS AND POMEGRANATES, No. III, DRAMATIC LYRICS, (1842)


• [My Last Duchess] Italy and France: II. France


• [Soliloquy] Camp and Cloister: II. Cloister (Spanish)


• In a Gondola


• Artemis Prologuizes


• Waring


• The Pied Piper of Hamelin


• FROM HOOD'S MAGAZINE, vol. 1, June 1844; vol. 2, July 1844; vol. 3, March 1845; vol. 3, April 1845


• The Laboratory


• Garden Fancies: I. The Flower's Name; II. Sibrandus Schnaburgensis


• [The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St. Praxed's Church] The Tomb at St. Praxed's


• The Flight of the Duchess, sections 1-9


• LETTER TO ELIZABETH BARRETT, 10 JANUARY, 1845


• FROM BELLS AND POMEGRANATES, NO. VII, DRAMATIC ROMANCES AND LYRICS (1845)


• How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix


• Pictor Ignotus


• [The Italian in England] Italy in England


• [The Englishman in Italy] England in Italy


• The Lost Leader


• Home Thoughts from Abroad, I and III


• Saul, sections 1-9


• FROM LETTERS OF PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY (1852)


• Introductory Essay


• FROM MEN AND WOMEN, I and II (1855)


• I.


• Love among the Ruins


• A Lovers' Quarrel


• Evelyn Hope


• Up at a Villa--Down in the City


• A Woman's Last Word


• Fra Lippo Lippi


• A Toccata of Galuppi's


• By the Fireside


• Any Wife to Any Husband


• An Epistle ... Karshish, the Arab Physician


• Mesmerism


• A Serenade at the Villa


• My Star


• 'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came'


• Respectability


• A Light Woman


• The Statue and the Bust


• Love in a Life


• Life in a Love


• How It Strikes a Contemporary


• The Last Ride Together


• The Patriot: An Old Story


• Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha


• Bishop Blougram's Apol

  About the author

  Richard Cronin has published very widely on nineteenth-century literature. After teaching for many years at the University of Glasgow, he has recently been appointed to a chair at Oxford Brookes University.
  
  Dorothy McMillan is an Honorary Research Fellow of the University of Glasgow, and has published widely with a particular focus on Scottish literature and poetry by women.

  Summary

  This volume in the 21st-Century Oxford Authors series offers students and readers a comprehensive selection of the work of Robert Browning (1812-1889). Accompanied by full scholarly apparatus, this is the first one-volume fully annotated edition of Browning's poetry. It presents work written across the breadth of his career, from the very first poem he published, Pauline, to Asolando, the volume that was published on the day that he died.
  
  The text chosen is, wherever possible, the text of the poem as it was first published by Browning himself, and as a consequence the volume also constitutes a kind of biography that enables students to understand Browning's development over the course of his life. The edition reveals a poet who began as a bold experimentalist, and who continued to experiment throughout a writing career of more than fifty years. Browning is best known for his dramatic monologues, and the dramatic monologues are fully represented in this volume, but he was also a narrative poet, a poet of philosophical reflection, and a poet who fashioned an extraordinary variety of lyric measures. This volume reveals Browning as a far more versatile poet than he is often taken to be. There are two important prose items, an essay on Shelley and a letter to Ruskin which clarify Browning's intellectual stance. The Notes include brief headnotes to each poem followed by detailed annotation, and they assist the reader in developing a full understanding of these masterful poems.
  
  Explanatory notes and commentary are included, to enhance the study, understanding, and enjoyment of these works, and the edition includes an Introduction to the life and works of Browning, and a Chronology.

  Additional text

  In addition to a useful and judicious selection of Browning's poems, this volume includes three letters by Browning and his Essay on Shelley.' The annotations are learned and lucid.

  Report

  This splendidly edited selection of Robert Browning's poetry is the ideal one-volume edition for undergraduate study. Richard Cronin and Dorothy McMillan choose expertly from the whole range of the poetry, convincing one of the importance of the later work as well as underscoring the magnificent achievement of the more widely read earlier verse and including the important Essay on Shelley; their vibrant introduction relishes Browning's originality and unexpectedness, and their annotations are informative and critically suggestive. With its attractively clean reading texts and editorial savvy, the volume brings Browning thrillingly to life. Michael O'Neill, Durham University

Product details

• Authors: Richard Cronin, Richard (Professor of English Literature Cronin, RICHARD ED CRONIN
• Assisted by: Richard Cronin (Editor), Richard (Professor of English Literature Cronin (Editor), Dorothy Mcmillan (Editor), Dorothy (Honorary Research Fellow McMillan (Editor)
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 28.02.2018
• EAN: 9780198797623
• ISBN: 978-0-19-879762-3
• No. of pages: 900
• Series: 21st Century Oxford Authors; 21st Century Oxford Authors; 21st-Century Oxford Authors
• Subjects: Fiction > Poetry, drama > Poetry; Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies