This book delves into the literary genius of Robert Browning, the renowned Victorian poet and playwright famous for his dramatic monologues. Although his early works 'Pauline' and 'Paracelsus' were highly praised, his reputation suffered after 'Sordello' was considered too cryptic. However, he reinvented himself with a more personal style, which he showcased in his collection 'Men and Women'. Browning's marriage to fellow poet Elizabeth Barrett and his move to Italy also had a profound effect on his work. This book offers a comprehensive study of Browning's life and works, examining his ironic tone, unique characterization, historical settings, and use of languages.

First published in 1972. Browning was a keen observer and dramatic recorder of nineteenth-century European culture; his poetry reflects a wide range of intellectual, religious and artistic issues of his day. Roy E. Gridley shows here that during the six decades of Browning’s active writing career (1832-89), his poetry is a record and an interpretation of the changing modes of thought, feeling and expression of nineteenth-century life. Browning was a ‘romantic’ who, by virtue of his realistic and often revolutionary poetry, became a ‘modern’, and had considerable influence on writers such as Yeats, Eliot and Pound. While surveying the whole of Browning’s life and work, Gridley focuses closely on the more famous poems, examining them as documents that give the general reader a deeper appreciation of the richness and diversity of life in Victorian Europe.

This title, first published in 1909, presents a selection of the most important essays by members of the renowned Browning Society, which existed to promulgate the works of and appreciation for perhaps the greatest English poet of the Victorian Age. Browning’s poetry deals with themes that are of perennial importance: the nature of the human person, human love, and the source of the love, God. Browning Studies will appeal to Browning enthusiasts and the message his writing communicates: "A profound, passionate, living, triumphant faith in Christ, and in the immortality and ultimate redemption of every human soul in and through Christ."