"Life and Letters of Robert Browning By Mrs. Sutherland Orr Robert Browning was one of the greatest English poets during the Victorian era. Browning 's poetry is remarkable for its use of irony, dark humor, and social commentary.This is a biography which was edited by Mrs. Sutherland Orr that also includes many of the great poet's letters." -- Amazon.com

Origin of the Browning Family—Robert Browning's Grandfather—His position and Character—His first and second Marriage—Unkindness towards his eldest Son, Robert Browning's Father—Alleged Infusion of West Indian Blood through Robert Browning's Grandmother—Existing Evidence against it—The Grandmother's Portrait. A belief was current in Mr. Browning's lifetime that he had Jewish blood in his veins. It received outward support from certain accidents of his life, from his known interest in the Hebrew language and literature, from his friendship for various members of the Jewish community in London. It might well have yielded to the fact of his never claiming the kinship, which could not have existed without his knowledge, and which, if he had known it, he would, by reason of these very sympathies, have been the last person to disavow. The results of more recent and more systematic inquiry have shown the belief to be unfounded. Our poet sprang, on the father's side, from an obscure or, as family tradition asserts, a decayed branch, of an Anglo-Saxon stock settled, at an early period of our history, in the south, and probably also south-west, of England. A line of Brownings owned the manors of Melbury-Sampford and Melbury-Osmond, in north-west Dorsetshire; their last representative disappeared—or was believed to do so—in the time of Henry VII., their manors passing into the hands of the Earls of Ilchester, who still hold them.* The name occurs after 1542 in different parts of the country: in two cases with the affix of 'esquire', in two also, though not in both coincidently, within twenty miles of Pentridge, where the first distinct traces of the poet's family appear. Its cradle, as he called it, was Woodyates, in the parish of Pentridge, on the Wiltshire confines of Dorsetshire; and there his ancestors, of the third and fourth generations, held, as we understand, a modest but independent social position....

The even course of this life, -outwardly placid, physically marred with weakness, intellectually and spiritually bright, vivid, and noble-was shaken to its foundations by the advent of Robert Browning. The story of the friendship, which ripened so rapidly into love, has been made the common property of the world through the publication of the letters which passed between them...-from "Chapter IX: 1844-1846"This beautiful biography of British poet Robert Browning explores his life and work through the prism of the correspondence he exchanged with friends, family, and colleagues. From his forbidden courtship with and secret marriage to his fellow writer, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, to his thoughts on the verse of Keats and Shelley, his travels to Italy, his outlook on the cultural and intellectual life of London, and more, this lovely work offers an extraordinary perspective on one of the most beloved poets in the English language. First published in 1891, this is a reproduction of the revised and expanded 1908 edition.ALEXANDRA LEIGHTON (1828-1903), aka Mrs. Sutherland Orr, also wrote A Handbook to the Works of Browning (1885).