Gorgeous, spirited and extravagantly rich, Cora Cash is the closest thing 1890s New York society has to a princess. Her masquerade ball is the prelude to a campaign that will see her mother whisk Cora to Europe, where Mrs Cash wants nothing less than a title for her daughter. In England, impoverished blue-bloods are queueing up for introductions to American heiresses, overlooking the sometimes lowly origins of their fortunes. Cora makes a dazzling impression, but the English aristocracy is a realm fraught with arcane rules and pitfalls, and there are those less than eager to welcome a wealthy outsider...

Henry James called Robert Browning (1812-89) a tremendous and incomparable modern, and the immediacy and colloquial energy of his poetry has ensured its enduring appeal. This biography sets out to do the same for his life, animating the stereotypes (romantic hero, poetic exile, eminent man of letters) that have left him neglected by modern biographers.

This carefully edited collection has been designed and formatted to the highest digital standards and adjusted for readability on all devices. Robert Browning (1812–1889) was an English poet and playwright whose mastery of the dramatic monologue made him one of the foremost Victorian poets. His poems are known for their irony, characterization, dark humour, social commentary, historical settings, and challenging vocabulary and syntax. Contents: Life and Letters of Robert Browning: Life and Letters of Robert Browning by Mrs. Sutherland Orr The Brownings: Their Life and Art Letters Life of Robert Browning by William Sharp Robert Browning by G.K. Chesterton Poetry: Bells and Pomegranates No. III: Dramatic Lyrics Bells and Pomegranates No. VII: Dramatic Romances and Lyrics Pauline: A Fragment of a Confession Sordello Asolando Men and Women Dramatis Personae The Ring and the Book Balaustion's Adventure Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Saviour of Society Fifine at the Fair Red Cotton Nightcap Country Aristophanes' Apology The Inn Album Pacchiarotto, and How He Worked in Distemper La Saisiaz and the Two Poets of Croisic Dramatic Idylls Dramatic Idylls: Second Series Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day Jocoseria Ferishtah's Fancies Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in Their Day Plays: Strafford Paracelsus Bells and Pomegranates No. I: Pippa Passes Bells and Pomegranates No. II: King Victor and King Charles Bells and Pomegranates No. IV: The Return of the Druses Bells and Pomegranates No. V: A Blot in the 'scutcheon Bells and Pomegranates No. VI: Colombe's Birthday Bells and Pomegranates No. VIII: Luria and a Soul's Tragedy Herakles The Agamemnon of Aeschylus

What are the influences that shaped the language used by one of the nineteenth century's greatest writers? How did his religious beliefs, the books he owned, the paintings and music he loved, affect almost sixty years' output of poems, plays, essays, and letters? This book attempts to define Browning's understanding of the nature and use of words and syntax by considering not only a full range of texts from the 1833 Pauline to the 1889 Asolando, but also the ideas important to Browning, the historical context in which he lived, and the other artistic passions that played a part in his life. In this companion volume to Tennyson's Language, Donald Hair establishes Browning's place at the crossroads between empirical and idealist traditions and explains his "double view" of language, arguing that both Locke and the Congregationalists found language to be at the same time empty and a God-given essential. The Victorian age's anti-theatrical bias, which Browning came to share, and his reading of predecessors, principally Quarles, Bunyan, Donne, and Smart, also shaped his understanding of the diction of poetry. Hair conceives of Browning's language as a theoretical whole, encompassing words, genres, rhyme, syntax, and phonetics. He also links Browning's interest in music with his rhyming, the most essential and characteristic feature of his prosody, and relates his interest in painting to the interpretation of the visual image in the emblem and in typology.