Browning, Robert 1812-89
English poet

Born in Camberwell, he attended lectures briefly at University College London and then travelled abroad. Pauline, a dramatic poem written at the age of 20, was published anonymously in 1833. He made a visit to St Petersburg, and on his return Paracelsus (1835) won him some recognition in literary circles. He wrote several dramas and collections of shorter dramatic poems and published them under the title Bells and Pomegranates (1841-46). It included Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1845), which contained 'My Last Duchess' and 'The Pied Piper of Hamelin'. From 1846 he was married to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, settling first in Pisa (1846) and then in Florence (1847), where their son, Robert Wiedemann Barrett Browning (1849-1912), the sculptor, was born. In 1855 Browning published Men and Women, which contained such poems as 'Fra Lippo Lippi', 'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came' and 'Andrea del Sarto'. After the death of his wife (1861) he settled in London with his son, and wrote the famous The Ring and the Book, published in four volumes (1868-69). Browning's poetry is distinguished by its spiritual insight and psychological analysis; and he invented new kinds of narrative structure to take the place of the epic and the pastoral. In his play Pippa Passes (1841), for example, a girl's song binds together a variety of scenes. His other chief works are Dramatis Personae (1864), Fifine at the Fair (1872), The Inn Album (1875), Pacchiarotto (1876) and Asolando (1889).

Bibliography: T E F Blackburn, Robert Browing: a study of his poetry (1973); A Maurois, Robert and Elizabeth Browning (1955)