37 Facts About Robert Browning

Robert Browning was an English poet and playwright whose dramatic monologues put him high among the Victorian poets.

Robert Browning was noted for irony, characterization, dark humour, social commentary, historical settings and challenging vocabulary and syntax.

Robert Browning was born in Walworth in the parish of Camberwell, Surrey, which now forms part of the Borough of Southwark in south London.

Robert Browning was baptised on 14 June 1812, at Lock's Fields Independent Chapel, York Street, Walworth, the only son of Sarah Anna and Robert Browning.

Robert Browning's father had been sent to the West Indies to work on a sugar plantation but returned to England following a slave revolt.

Robert Browning's mother was the daughter of a German shipowner who had settled in Dundee, Scotland, and his Scottish wife.

Robert Browning's mother, to whom he was close, was a devout nonconformist and a talented musician.

Robert Browning's father encouraged his children's interest in literature and the arts.

Robert Browning became an admirer of the Romantic poets, especially Shelley, whom he followed in becoming an atheist and a vegetarian.

Robert Browning had inherited substantial musical ability through his mother, and composed arrangements of various songs.

Robert Browning refused a formal career and ignored his parents' remonstrations by dedicating himself to poetry.

Robert Browning stayed at home until the age of 34, financially dependent on his family until his marriage.

Robert Browning's father sponsored the publication of his son's poems.

In March 1833, "Pauline, a Fragment of a Confession" was published anonymously by Saunders and Otley at the expense of the author, Robert Browning, who received the money from his aunt, Mrs Silverthorne.

Originally Robert Browning considered Pauline as the first of a series written by different aspects of himself, but he soon abandoned this idea.

Later Robert Browning was rather embarrassed by the work, and only included it in his collected poems of 1868 after making substantial changes and adding a preface in which he asked for indulgence for a boyish work.

Robert Browning then wrote two other plays, one of which was not performed, while the other failed, Robert Browning having fallen out with Macready.

In 1845, Robert Browning met the poet Elizabeth Barrett, six years his senior, who lived as a semi-invalid in her father's house in Wimpole Street, London.

However, the literary assault on Robert Browning's work did not let up and he was critically dismissed further, by patrician writers such as Charles Kingsley, for the desertion of England for foreign lands.

Robert Browning identified as a Liberal, supported the emancipation of women, and opposed slavery, expressing sympathy for the North in the American Civil War.

Robert Browning was a stalwart opponent of anti-Semitism, leading to speculation that Browning himself was Jewish.

Isobel Armstrong's writing on dramatic monologues, as well as more recent work on the influence of Coriolanus on Robert Browning's politics, has attempted to situate the poet's political sensibility at the centre of his practice.

Robert Browning is said to have made an uncharacteristic admission of faith to Alfred Domett, when he is said to have admired Byron's poetry "as a Christian".

Robert Browning believed spiritualism to be fraud, and proved one of Daniel Dunglas Home's most adamant critics.

Robert Browning stood and watched the cobbler at his trade, The man who slices lemons into drink, The coffee-roaster's brazier, and the boys That volunteer to help him turn its winch.

Robert Browning glanced o'er books on stalls with half an eye, And fly-leaf ballads on the vendor's string, And broad-edge bold-print posters by the wall.

In Florence, probably from early in 1853, Robert Browning worked on the poems that eventually comprised his two-volume Men and Women, for which he is well known, although in 1855, when they were published, they made relatively little impact.

The Robert Browning Society was formed in 1881 and his work was recognised as belonging within the British literary canon.

In 1887, Robert Browning produced the major work of his later years, Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in Their Day.

The Victorian public was baffled by this, and Robert Browning returned to the brief, concise lyric for his last volume, Asolando, published on the day of his death.

Robert Browning died at his son's home Ca' Rezzonico in Venice on 12 December 1889.

Robert Browning was buried in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey; his grave now lies immediately adjacent to that of Alfred Tennyson.

Robert Browning's admirers have tended to temper their praise with reservations about the length and difficulty of his most ambitious poems, particularly Sordello and, to a lesser extent, The Ring and the Book.

Robert Browning used poetry as a medium for writing in prose.

Robert Browning's work has nevertheless had many detractors, and most of his voluminous output is not widely read.

Stephen Banfield rates it highly among musical settings of Robert Browning, calling it "one of his few very powerful compositions".

In 1920, the US composer Anne Stratton composed one based on Robert Browning's poem "Parting at Morning".