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The Poems of Browning is the first collected edition to be based on the earliest printed texts, and to present these texts in order of their composition.Together, volumes I and II provide an authoritative and accessible tribute to this great poet.
Volume I, 1826-1840 traces Browning's career up to the writing of Sordello. It includes his only surviving juvenilia: The Dance of Death and The First-Borm of Egypt; Pauline, his first anonymous publication, and Paracelsus, the poem which made his literary reputation.
List of contents
"The Dance of Death"; "The First-born of Egypt"; "Pauline" a fragment of a confession; impromptu on hearing a sermon by the Rev. T.R-- pronounced "heavy"; Cockney anthology - a specimen; on Andrea del Sarto's "Jupiter and Leda"; on the deleterious effects of tea (classicality applied to tea-dealing); Sonnet ("Eyes Calm Beside Thee"); "Pareacelsus"; the King; Porphyria (Porphyria's lover); Johannes Agricola (Johannes Agricola in meditation); lines ("still ailing, wind"); (epitaph for James Dow and his family); a forest thought; cavalier tunes - marching along; give a rouse; my wife Gertrude (boot and saddle); Sordello; Rudel and the Lady of Tripoli; Cristina. Appendix: MS transcriptions of "The Dance of Death" and "The First-Born of Egypt".
About the author
Daniel Karlin is Winterstoke Professor of English Literature at the University of Bristol.
John Woolford is Professor Emeritus of nineteenth-century literature and culture at the University of Manchester and Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Sheffield.
Report
"...excellent...explicates obscurities of meaning more fully - its exposition of the narrative of 'Sordello' is a marvel of tenacity - and has more to tell about influences which came to Browning from a greater distance: its brilliant note on 'Pippa Passes', Introduction 49ff, for example, convincingly cites the 'Aeneid' and Montaigne...Woolford and karlin are meticulous readers of Browning...Longman's notes more amply supplement the poet's eventual desire to be of assistance to his readers." - The Times Literary Supplement
