The Poems Of Robert Browning Volume Five

The Ring and the Book, published serially in 1868–9, is one of the most daring and innovative poems in the English language. The story is based on the trial of an Italian nobleman, Guido Franceschini, for the murder of his wife Pompilia in Rome in 1698. Browning’s discovery of the ‘old yellow book’, a bundle of legal documents and letters relating to the trial, on a second-hand market stall in Florence, sparked an imaginative engagement with this sordid tale of domestic cruelty, adultery, and greed which grew, through four years of arduous labour, into an epic peopled not by gods and warriors but by concrete, recognisably human beings. Fusing the technique of the dramatic monologue, the form he had made his own, with the grandeur of classical epic and the vivid realism of the modern novel, Browning created a unique hybrid form that allowed him not only to bring to life an entire historical period but also to reflect on the process of artistic creation itself – the forging of the golden ‘ring’ of the poem from the ‘pure crude fact’ of its historical original. This edition, comprising volumes 5 and 6 in the acclaimed Longman Annotated English Poets edition of Browning’s poems, does full justice to the scope and depth of Browning’s achievement. The headnote in volume 5 gives an authoritative account of the poem’s composition, publication, sources, and reception, making use of hitherto unpublished letters and textual material. In addition to giving readers help, where needed, with historical and linguistic comprehension, the notes track Browning’s formidable range of allusion, from the most erudite to the most vulgar. The appendices in volume 6 present a selection from the original sources, a list of variants from extant proofs, and key passages from Browning’s fascinating and revealing correspondence with one of the earliest readers of the poem, Julia Wedgwood. The aim is to enable readers not just to understand the poem as an object of study, but to take pleasure in its abounding intellectual and emotional energies.

The Ring and the Book, published serially in 1868–9, is one of the most daring and innovative poems in the English language. The story is based on the trial of an Italian nobleman, Guido Franceschini, for the murder of his wife Pompilia in Rome in 1698. Browning’s discovery of the ‘old yellow book’, a bundle of legal documents and letters relating to the trial, on a second-hand market stall in Florence, sparked an imaginative engagement with this sordid tale of domestic cruelty, adultery, and greed which grew, through four years of arduous labour, into an epic peopled not by gods and warriors but by concrete, recognizably human beings. Fusing the technique of the dramatic monologue, the form he had made his own, with the grandeur of classical epic and the vivid realism of the modern novel, Browning created a unique hybrid form that allowed him not only to bring to life an entire historical period but also to reflect on the process of artistic creation itself —the forging of the golden ‘ring’ of the poem from the ‘pure crude fact’ of its historical original. This edition, comprising volumes 5 and 6 in the acclaimed Longman Annotated English Poets edition of Browning’s poems, does full justice to the scope and depth of Browning’s achievement. The headnote in volume 5 gives an authoritative account of the poem’s composition, publication, sources, and reception, making use of hitherto unpublished letters and textual material. In addition to giving readers help, where needed, with historical and linguistic comprehension, the notes track Browning’s formidable range of allusion, from the most erudite to the most vulgar. The appendices in volume 6 present a selection from the original sources, a list of variants from extant proofs, and key passages from Browning’s fascinating and revealing correspondence with one of the earliest readers of the poem, Julia Wedgwood. The aim is to enable readers not just to understand the poem as an object of study, but to take pleasure in its abounding intellectual and emotional energies.

This is the second instalment of Browning's great murder-story set in the Italy of the 1690s, The Ring and the Book, a poem which Henry James called a 'monstrous magnificence'. Here Browning lets the central characters of his poem - the corrupt aristocrat and murderer Franceschini, his victim, and her rescuer - tell the story in their own words.

This is the first scholarly edition of Browning's greatest collection of short poems, Men & Women. A comprehensive introduction shows how new research has unearthed material which throws fresh light on the composition and dates of such famous pieces as `Fra Lippo Lippi', `Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came', and `One Word More: To E.B.B.'. This edition uses a critical text based on that of Browning's final collection, and has detailed introductions to the individual poems. It is the fifth volume in the highly praised Poetical Works of Robert Browning.

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Robert Browning represents the intellectual and argumentative strand in English poetry, in contrast to the more ornate style of Spenser and Tennyson. His poetry demonstrates that a poet must be a sharp observer of the human condition. The most moving poems deal with his feelings for his wife.

The Poems of Robert Browning is a multi-volume edition of the poetry of Robert Browning (1812 -1889) resulting from a completely fresh appraisal of the canon, text and context of his work. The poems are presented in the order of their composition and in the text in which they were first published, giving a unique insight into the origins and development of Browning's art. Annotations and headnotes, in keeping with the traditions of Longman Annotated English Poets, are full and informative and provide details of composition, publication, sources and contemporary reception. Volumes one (1826-1840) and two (1841-1846) presented the poems from his Browning's early years, while volume three (1847-61) covered the period of his marriage to Elizabeth Barrett and residence in Italy. Volume four (1862-71) deals with the decade following Elizabeth's death and Browning's return to England. These years saw the appearance of some of his most significant work, and a steady rise in his critical reputation. In Dramatis Personae (1864), Browning uses his characteristic 'dramatic' mode to expose predicaments of thought and feeling, in characters ranging from Shakespeare's Caliban to the cheating medium, 'Mr Sludge'; other poems dramatize Browning's complicated feelings about the deceptions and self-deceptions of romantic love. Balaustion's Adventure (1871) is an engaging reworking of Euripides' Alcestis, whose theme, the resurrection of a beloved lost wife, has poignant personal resonance for Browning; while Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, published in the same year, offers a thinly-veiled account of the life and actions of Napoleon III, the recently deposed Emperor of France, over whom Browning and Elizabeth had quarrelled. In these two long poems, Browning can be seen engaged in the dialogue with Elizabeth that was to shape much of his work during the remainder of his writing life Volume five will be devoted to The Ring and the Book (1868-9), the twelve-book epic which many during the nineteenth century considered Browning's greatest work. When complete, The Poems of Browning will represent the most informative and up-to-date edition of the works of one of England's greatest poets. Daniel Karlin is Winterstoke Professor of English Literature at the University of Bristol. Joseph Phelan is a Reader in Nineteenth-Century Literature at De Montfort University. John Woolford is Professor Emeritus of nineteenth-century literature and culture at the University of Manchester and Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Sheffield.