Biography: Robert Browning

by Edward Dowden

SUBJECT
Browning, Robert, 1812-1889
Poets, English -- 19th century -- Biography

Contents


CHAPTER I

CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH

Ancestry—Parents—Boyhood—Influence of Shelley—Pauline


CHAPTER II

PARACELSUS AND SORDELLO

Visit to Russia—Paracelsus—His failures and attainments—Sordello, a companion poem—Its obscurity—Imaginative qualities—The history of a soul

CHAPTER III

THE MAKER OF PLAYS

New acquaintances—Hatcham—Macready—Strafford—Venice—Bells and Promegranates—A Blot on the 'Scutcheon—Characters of passion—Characters of intellect


CHAPTER IV

THE MAKER OF PLAYS—(continued)

Women of the dramas—Dramatic style—Pippa Passes—Dramatic Lyrics and Romances—Poems of Love and of Art


CHAPTER V

LOVE AND MARRIAGE

First letters to Miss Barrett—Meeting—Progress in friendship—Obstacles—Marriage


CHAPTER VI

EARLY YEARS IN ITALY

Correspondence of R.B. and E.B.B.—Journey to Italy—Pisa—Florence—Vallombrosa—Italian politics—Casa Guidi-Friends—Son born—Death of Browning's mother—Wanderings.


CHAPTER VII

CHRISTMAS EVE AND EASTER DAY

Publication—Movements of Religious Thought—Dissent—Catholicism—Criticism—Difficulties of Christian life—Imaginative power of the poems—In Venice—Paris—England—Paris again—Coup d'état


CHAPTER VIII

FROM 1851 TO 1855

Essay on Shelley—New acquaintances—Milsand—George Sand—London—Casa Guidi—Spiritualism—Mr Sludge the Medium—Baths of Lucca—Rome—London—Tennyson's Maud


CHAPTER IX

MEN AND WOMEN

Rossetti's admiration—Beauty before teaching—The poet behind his poems—Isolated poems—Groups—Poems of love—Poems of Art—Poems of Religion


CHAPTER X

CLOSE OF MRS BROWNING'S LIFE

Paris—Kenyon's death—Legacies—Death of Mr Barrett—Winter in Florence—Havre—Rome—Louis Napoleon—Landor—Siena—Poems before Congress—Rome again—Modelling in Clay—Casa Guidi—Death of Mrs Browning


CHAPTER XI

LONDON: DRAMATIS PERSONAE

Desolation—Return to London—Pornic—Social life—Dramatis Personae—Poems of music—Poems of hope and aspiration—A Death in the Desert—Epilogue—Caliban upon Setebos—Poems of Love


CHAPTER XII

THE RING AND THE BOOK

Holiday excursions—Sainte Marie—Miss Barrett dies—Balliol College and Jowett—Origin of the Ring and the Book—Its Plan—The Persons—Count Guido—Pompilia—Caponsacchi—The Pope—Falsehood subserving truth


CHAPTER XIII

POEMS ON CLASSICAL SUBJECTS

Saint-Aubin—Milsand—Miss Thackeray—Hervé Riel—Miss Egerton-Smith—Summer wanderings—Balaustion's Adven

Kindle Edition

Published August 15, 2018

About the author

Edward Dowden was an Irish critic and poet.
He was the son of John Wheeler Dowden, a merchant and landowner, and was born at Cork, three years after his brother John, who became Bishop of Edinburgh in 1886.

Edward's literary tastes emerged early, in a series of essays written at the age of twelve. His home education continued at Queen's College, Cork and at Trinity College, Dublin; at the latter he had a distinguished career, becoming president of the Philosophical Society, and winning the vice-chancellor's prize for English verse and prose, and the first senior moderatorship in ethics and logic. In 1867 he was elected professor of oratory and English literature in Dublin University.

Dowden's first book, Shakespeare, his Mind and Art (1875), resulted from a revision of a course of lectures, and made him widely known as a critic: translations appeared in German and Russian; his Poems (1876) went into a second edition. His Shakespeare Primer (1877) was translated into Italian and German. In 1878 the Royal Irish Academy awarded him the Cunningham gold medal "for his literary writings, especially in the field of Shakespearian criticism."[1]

Later works by him in this field included an edition of The Sonnets of William Shakespeare (1881), Passionate Pilgrim (1883), Introduction to Shakespeare (1893), Hamlet (1899), Romeo and Juliet (1900), Cymbeline (1903), and an article entitled Shakespeare as a Man of Science (in the National Review, July 1902), which criticized T.E. Webb's Mystery of William Shakespeare. His critical essays Studies in Literature (1878), Transcripts and Studies (1888), New Studies in Literature (1895) showed a profound knowledge of the currents and tendencies of thought in various ages and countries; but his Life of Shelley (1886) made him best known to the public at large. In 1900 he edited an edition of Shelley's works.

Other books by him which indicate his interests in literature include: Robert Southey (in the "English Men of Letters" series, 1880), his edition of Southey's Correspondence with Caroline Bowles (1881), and Select Poems of Southey (1895), his Correspondence of Sir Henry Taylor (1888), his edition of Wordsworth's Poetical Works (1892) and of his Lyrical Ballads (1890), his French Revolution and English Literature (1897; lectures given at Princeton University in 1896), History of French Literature (1897), Puritan and Anglican (1900), Robert Browning (1904) and Michel de Montaigne (1905). His devotion to Goethe led to his succeeding Max Müller in 1888 as president of the English Goethe Society.

To his research are due, among other matters of literary interest, the first account of Thomas Carlyle's Lectures on periods of European culture; the identification of Shelley as the author of a review (in The Critical Review of December 1814) of a lost romance by James Hogg; a description of Shelley's Philosophical View of Reform; a manuscript diary of Fabre d'Églantine; and a record by Dr Wilhelm Weissenborn of Goethe's last days and death. He also discovered a Narrative of a Prisoner of War under Napoleon (published in Blackwood's Magazine), an unknown pamphlet by Bishop Berkeley, some unpublished writings of William Hayley relating to Cowper, and a unique copy of the Tales of Terror.

His wide interests and scholarly methods made his influence on criticism both sound and stimulating, and his own ideals are well described in his essay on The Interpretation of Literature in his Transcripts and Studies. As commissioner of education in Ireland (1896–1901), trustee of the National Library of Ireland, secretary of the Irish Liberal Union and vice-president of the Irish Unionist Alliance, he enforced his view that literature should not be divorced from practical life.

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