Introducing Robert Browning

This is going to be fairly short, since I shared a ton about Robert Browning in the post about his wife a couple weeks ago.

Robert Browning
(1812-1889)

Robert Browning was born into a well-to-do British family in 1812.  His father was a clerk for the Bank of England and a devoted reader -- he had about 6,000 books in his personal collection.  Robert's mother was a talented musician.  Both parents encouraged their two children to read and study the arts.

Robert began writing poetry at a very early age and finished his first whole book of poetry at age twelve.  No one would print it, so he destroyed it and began again.  He became enamored with the Romantic poets, such as William Wordsworth, and his first published poem was written as an homage to Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.  That appeared in 1834, and he had some small success with poems and a few plays over the next ten years.  During this time, he continued to live at home once he had finished his boarding school education.

In 1845, he began corresponding with fellow poet Elizabeth Barrett, and they married in 1846.  The Brownings moved to Italy, where they lived mainly on the money Elizabeth had inherited from her grandmother.  Their only child, Robert Barrett "Pen" Browning, was born there.  

After Elizabeth died in 1861, Robert and Pen moved back to England.  Robert's younger sister moved in with them to keep house.  Robert was an outspoken abolitionist and was vocal in his support of the United States during their Civil War.  He also spoke and wrote against anti-Semitism and cruelty to animals.

Robert was raised a Protestant, but embraced atheism as a young man.  After marrying Elizabeth, who was a devout Christian, he appears to have returned to the faith, though he remained a critic of people who believed God existed simply because they were supposed to.

When he returned to England and settled in London, Robert's poetry career began to really take off.  Up until that time, his wife had been far more famous and celebrated than he was (in fact, she was a serious contender for being named Britain's next Poet Laureate for a while).  But in 1868, he published a book-length poem in blank verse, The Ring and the Book, which took him five years to write and polish, and it brought he immense attention and acclaim.  He spent the rest of his life traveling and writing poetry, and never remarried.  He died in his son Pen's home in Venice in 1889.

Most of Robert Browning's poems are "dramatic monologues," which means they're words spoken by some fictitious character to someone else.  During the poem, the speaker's attitudes and beliefs and personality are slowly revealed by what they say.  We'll be studying one of his most famous dramatic monologues this week.

I'll end this with something kind of random and cool: 

This is a cast of Elizabeth and Robert's hands made by the artist Harriet Goodhue Hosmer in 1853.  She later made several bronze and plaster sculptures from the original cast.  I find it really sweet and lovely, and it makes them feel very human and real, somehow.  To me, anyway!