The Ring and the Book (Broadview literary texts) [Paperback]

Robert Browning (Author), Thomas J. Collins (Author), Richard D. Altick (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 5, 2001 | ISBN-10: 1551113724 | ISBN-13: 978-1551113722 | Edition: 1

In June, 1860, Browning purchased an "old yellow book" from a bookstall in Florence. The book contained legal briefs, pamphlets, and letters relating to a case that had been tried in 1698 involving a child bride, a disguised priest, a triple murder, four hangings and the beheading of a nobleman. Browning resolved to use it as the source for a poem. The result, The Ring and the Book, is certainly one of the most important long poems of the Victorian era and is arguably Browning's greatest work. Basing their edition on the 1888-89 version of the poem, Altick and Collins include the last corrections Browning intended before his death. In addition to a substantial introduction, this Broadview Literary Texts edition also includes selections from Browning's correspondence, and contemporary reviews and reactions to the work.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"To the established virtues of Altick's 1971 edition meticulous scholarship, judicious annotation, informative introduction and appendices Altick and Collins have now made welcome improvements: an open and reader-friendly look with notes at the bottom of the page where one wants them; a score of reviews and letters from contemporaries hailing (sometimes assailing) the enormity of Browning's genius; most important, a copytext based on the 1888-89 edition and incorporating the poet's authoritative corrections. This should become at once the edition of choice for classroom or armchair use, and may in time incite a Ring and the Book revival." (Herbet Tucker )

"Altick and Collins offer us the most reader-friendly text of Browning's great work along with pithy, concise notes and splendidly compact, lucid background to the text and its creation." (John Maynard ) --John Maynard

From the Publisher

ISFN's Classics Again series hopes to bring great books that have been undeservedly forgotten back into the spotlight. We are delighted to have the opportunity to present you with a work that might have otherwise eluded your notice. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 824 pages
• Publisher: Broadview Press; 1 edition (March 5, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1551113724
• ISBN-13: 978-1551113722
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,445,630 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The unknown masterpeice of English literature, August 3, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Ring and the Book (Everyman's Library) (Hardcover)

As an English major at the University of Pittsburgh, I was never exposed to this series of dramatic monologues. It's a pity, because when I finally stumbled across it, Browning went from being just another 19th-century poet to my favorite English language poet of them all, at one fell swoop. The Ring and the Book is based on a real-life murder trial in 17th century Rome. The story is told from multiple perspectives, changing with every new section of the book; we hear from the "Man on the Street", the murderer, the victim on her death-bed, and even the Pope. The details of the story are far too convoluted to explain in summary and do anything resembling justice to the book, but it can be safely said that once you've begun, you're in for a whirlwind ride through a carnival of a trial that makes the O.J. Simpson affair look like a parking-ticket dispute by comparison. The truly stand-out feature of The Ring and the Book is not in the story itself, however, but in the telling. Browning handles the English language like a virtuoso emulating angel's choruses on a Stradivarius. If the book suffers any single flaw, it is the simple fact that at times, Browning writes these lines almost TOO well, making it difficult for the reader to pay attention to the actually progression of the story, as said reader becomes entraced by the beauty of the poetry. (In particular, I consider Caponsacchi's description of the flight from Arezzo beginning at line 1152 of Book VI to be one of the best written passages in literature of all time.) Dramatic blank verse hasn't seen genius of this level since Milton wrote of the angelic Fall. It's a pity this book isn't more widely recognized and discussed, for it deserves recognition as one of the best-constructed poetic stories of history, and the pinnacle of 19th century authorship.

32 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome, November 7, 2002

By 

Samuel Chell (Kenosha,, WI United States) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Ring and the Book (Penguin English Poets) (Mass Market Paperback)

I've just read some Amazon reviewers' responses to T. S. Eliot's poetry as testimony to his possibly being the greatest poet ever. Such an evaluation practically proves Eliot's insistent point about the cultural impoverishment of the present.

Indeed, Browning's masterwork may very well be the ultimate poetic epic in the English language, rivaled certainly not by Spenser, Wordsworth, and Pound but only by Chaucer and Milton. The fact that even the "trial of the century"--the O. J. Simpson case--did not produce widespread renewed interest in its literary predecessor and equivalent would produce surprise and disappointment were I not so aware that, outside of Shakespeare, the academic canon has been foreshortened (and engendered) to a tradition that begins with Virginia Woolf and ends with Sylvia Plath.

In "Ring and the Book" Browning takes the sordid event of an enraged husband murdering his helpless bride--the daughter of a prostitute and rescue project of a priest--to "explain the ways of God to man." The reader of the poem becomes, in effect, a "privileged" juror in the trial of the murderer, positioned through Browning's protean and powerful rhetoric within the consciousness of each of the principals before finally being enabled to glimpse the "truth" that affords meaning to human mutability and suffering.

The poem no doubt will remain in dust closets, largely unread even by literature Ph.D's. But there's little chance of its ever becoming lost. Like the priest-hero of the poem, a few priests of the imagination will ever so often make the poem's discovery and be lured into the quest of pursuing its singular meanings.

[A reader recently wrote asking me about this edition, which led to the discovery that Amazon often uses the same review for any and every edition! (Be careful about ordering used editions for the same reason.) I was referring to the Penguin edition, which is now out of print. Beware of the "Kessinger Edition," which is really no edition at all but a bootleg, an uncredited reprint. Moreover, it's the version that a search of the title is apt to take you to. You might try the Collins and Altick edition on Broadview.]

4.0 out of 5 stars nice edition of an under-studied text, December 2, 2008

By 

J Cole (Wisconsin) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Ring and the Book (Broadview literary texts) (Paperback)

Fascinating novel-length poem exploring the various sides in a real life 16th century Italian murder trial. This edition is nice, with critical reviews from Robert Browning's contemporaries. A Victorian poem that isn't read as often as it should be.