Robert Browning

Robert Browning

For many years Robert Browning struggled to find his voice in the Victorian literary world. Sometimes overshadowed by his wife Elizabeth Barrett Browning's success, Robert Browning produced collections of poetry and dramatic works for the stage, but it was not until his The Ring and The Book, that he finally gained financial and literary success. His profound contributions to the development of poetry through his psychological portraits and use of diction and rhythm however have long inspired poets into the twentieth century including Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and Robert Frost. In Many of his writings, Browning shows links to his life, including his family (mainly his wife), to god, and his love of England.

Robert Browning was born on May 7, 1812, in Camberwell, London, England. His father was a senior clerk with the Bank of England who provided a comfortable living for his family and passed on a love of art and literature to Robert. His mother, an excellent amateur pianist, gave him a love of music, while her strong and simple religious faith provided him with an lifelong belief in the existence of God. Browning went to primary school until he was fourteen, when his parents decided that he should be sent neither to a public nor a private school, but should instead be taught at home by a tutor. His home training included riding, fencing, boxing, singing, and others. The Brownings were a small, close-knit family, and Robert spent much time reading in his father's library of over seven thousand volumes. His father's love of the Greek tragedies prompted to play in the drawing room with the chairs as cities of Troy. Robert was very attached to all species of animals, hosting a wide variety of pets in his childhood.

Furthermore, Browning began to write verses at the age of six. His first published work was Pauline: A Fragment of a Confession, issued anonymously in 1833. The hero of the poem is a young poet, obviously Browning himself, who bares his soul to a patient heroine. When a critic commented that the anonymous author seemed "possessed with a more intense and morbid self-consciousness than I ever knew in any sane human being," Clyde de L. Ryals said that Browning promised himself to never again reveal his thoughts directly to his readers. This major step in Browning's poetic development was evident in his next long poem, Paracelsus (1835), whose hero was a Renaissance alchemist (an early chemist). This poem's main character, Paracelsus, refers to god many times, which could link to Browning being the religious man that he was.

…Paracelsus.

Dear Festus, hear me. What is it you wish?

That I should lay aside my heart's pursuit,

Abandon the sole ends for which I live,

Reject