Robert Browning

In 1845, Robert Browning met Elizabeth Barrettwho was a semi-invalid and a very popular poet in her own rightthrough her book of poems titled ‘Poems’ which he admired hugely.

Despite her dominating father’s disapproval, Browning managed to marry her on September 12, 1846 and eloped with her to Pisa and then to Florence in Italy a few days after marriage.

Elizabeth’s father was so disappointed with the marriage that he disinherited his daughter and the Brownings had to live on her cousin’s inheritance.

Robert Browning was born in Walworth in the parish of Camberwell in Surrey, a suburb of London in England on May 7, 1812.

His father was Robert Browning, Sr. and his mother was Sarah Anna Wiedemann, the daughter of a German ship-owner settled in Dundee in Scotland.She was also a talented musician. He was the first child of his parents and had a younger sister named Sarianna.

His father raised his family by working as a clerk in the Bank of England for a pay of only £150 per year. He amassed a library containing almost 6000 books, including some very rare ones, which became the basis of the younger Robert’s education at home. He lived in Camberwell with his parents and sister till he got married in 1846.

He attended a couple of private schools but found them totally unsuitable for his pursuit of becoming an accomplished poet and did not continue with normal school life. Instead a tutor was hired for him to study at home with the help of the books in his father’s library.

In spite of having no formal education during his childhood and being home-schooled, he was an extremely bright student who completed reading all the fifty volumes of ‘Biographie Universelle’.

Robert Browning started his writing career in 1830 but did not get much success during his initial days as a poet though he was supported whole heartedly by his family in accomplishing his objective.

After mastering the art of writing dramatic monologues, he published his first long poem titled ‘Pauline, a Fragment of a Confession’ in March 1833 which caught the attention of Dante Gabriel Rosetti.

It was followed by the poem ‘Paracelsus’ in 1835 based on a visit to St. Petersburg in Russia, with the Russian Consul-General named Chevalier George de Benkhausen. It received encouraging reviews from critics including Charles Dickens and William Wordsworth.

This poem gave Browning an entry to the literary circle in London where he met actor William Macready who asked him to write verses for his stage plays. The first play ‘Stafford’ was performed only five times while the second play written by him was not performed at all. The third play failed miserably bringing an end to the relationship between him and Macready.

His next poem, ‘Sordello’, published in 1840, was thought to be too lengthy and obscure and affected the reviews of poems he later wrote even though they were much shorter.This poem significantly reduced his reputation as a poet from which it took him almost a decade to recover. To get back his earlier reputation he moved away from the style of writing followed by P. B. Shelley and adopted a personal style for the series of eight pamphlets titled ‘Bells and Pomegranates’ published during 1841 to 1846.

Robert Browning is best known for the poem ‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin’ which was very popular among children. It was published in the paper ‘Dramatic Lyrics’ in 1842.He himself did not regard this poem to be consequential at that time but it became popular later.

In 1862 he published ‘Collected Poems’ and in 1863 published ‘Dramatis Personae’ for which he received high praise. ‘Dramatis Personae’ has both a first and a second edition.

His popularity shot up with the book ‘The Ring and the Book’ which he wrote in 12 volumes and published during the period November 1868 to February 1869 after coming back to England.