In 1845, Browning met
Elizabeth Barrett, who lived in her father's house in Wimpole Street. Gradually a significant romance developed between them, leading to their secret marriage in 1846. (The marriage was initially secret because Elizabeth's father disapproved of marriage for any of his children.) From the time of their marriage, the Brownings lived in
Italy, first in
Pisa, and then, within a year, finding an apartment in
Florence which they called Casa Guidi (now a museum to their memory). Their only child, Robert Wiedemann Barrett Browning, nicknamed "Penini" or "Pen", was born in 1849. In these years Browning was fascinated by and learnt hugely from the art and atmosphere of Italy. He would, in later life, say that 'Italy was my university'. Browning's poetry was known to the cognescenti from fairly early on in his life, but he remained relatively obscure as a poet till his middle age. (In the middle of the century,
Tennyson was much better known.) In Florence he worked on the poems that eventually comprised his two-volume Men and Women, for which he is now well known; in 1855, however, when these were published, they made little impact. It was only after his wife's death, in 1861, when he returned to England and became part of the London literary scene, that his reputation started to take off. In 1868, after five years work, he completed and published the long blank-verse poem
The Ring and the Book, and finally achieved really significant recognition. Based on a convoluted murder-case from
1690s Rome, the poem is composed of twelve volumes, essentially comprising ten lengthy dramatic poems narrated by the various characters in the story showing their individual take on events as they transpire, bookended by an introduction and conclusion by Browning himself. Extraordinarily long even by Browning's own standards (over twenty thousand lines),
The Ring and the Book was the poet's most ambitious project and has been hailed as a tour de force of dramatic poetry. Published separately in four volumes from November 1868 through to February 1869, the poem was a huge success both commercially and critically, and finally brought Browning the renown he had sought and deserved for nearly thirty years of work.
In the remaining twenty years of his life, as well as travelling extensively and frequenting London literary society again, Browning managed to publish no less than fifteen new volumes. None of these later works gained the popularity of
The Ring and the Book, and they are largely unread today. However, Browning's later work has been undergoing a major critical re-evaluation in recent years, and much of it remains of interest for its poetic quality and psychological insight. After a series of long poems published in the early
1870s, of which
Fifine at the Fair and
Red Cotton Night-Cap Country were the best-received, Browning again turned to shorter poems. The volume
Pacchiarotto, and How He Worked in Distemper included a spiteful attack against Browning's critics, especially the later
Poet Laureate Alfred Austin.
According to some reports Browning became romantically involved with
Lady Ashburton in the
1870s, but did not re-marry. In 1878, he returned to Italy for the first time in the seventeen years since Elizabeth's death, and returned there on several occasions.
The Browning Society was formed for the appreciation of his works in 1881.
In 1887, Browning produced the major work of his later years,
Parleyings with Certain People of Importance In Their Day. It finally presented the poet speaking in his own voice, engaging in a series of dialogues with long-forgotten figures of literary, artistic, and
philosophic history. Once more, the
Victorian public was baffled by this, and Browning returned to the short, concise lyric for his last volume,
Asolando (1889).
He died at his son's home
Ca' Rezzonico in
Venice on
12 December 1889, the same day
Asolando was published, and was buried in
Poets' Corner in
Westminster Abbey; his grave now lies immediately adjacent to that of
Alfred Tennyson.
rss feed