Robert Browning |
Robert Browning (1812-1899)
Robert Browning was born in 1812 in Camberwell, London. Although it appears that he had a limited formal education, his parents encouraged him to read and he was writing poetry from an early age. Fluent in French, Greek, Italian and Latin by the age of 14, he was also a great admirer of Shelley and for a while emulated him by becoming an atheist and vegetarian.
Although quite well known for short poems Browning is also remembered for his dramatic monologues such as ‘Porphyria’s Lover’ and ‘My Last Duchess’. His first published works were not very successful in the 1830s and 1840s but the techniques in writing and expression which he developed are felt to be his main contribution to poetry and influenced many 20th century poets such as Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot.
In 1846 he married Elizabeth Barrett and seems to have reduced his output over the next 15 years, but in 1855 he published a volume of poems called Men and Women, which he dedicated to his wife. After she died in 1861 he wrote his most ambitious work, The Ring and the Book, published in four separate volumes, 1868-1869. He died in 1889 and is buried in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey.
|
