Robert Browning (Oxford Authors) [Paperback]

Robert Browning (Author), Adam Roberts (Editor), Daniel Karlin (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 10, 1997 | ISBN-10: 0192823728 | ISBN-13: 978-0192823724 | Edition: annotated edition

The latest in the successful Oxford Authors series, this edition of Browning is the most comprehensive in print, spanning the full range of his output. The selection includes the complete text of many longer poems (Pauline, Pippa Passes), "Bishop Blougram's Apology") as well as three whole books of his epic masterpiece The Ring and the Book. Over eighty shorter poems are included, among them his best-loved dramatic monologues. In addition to Browning's only significant piece of critical writing (the "Essay on Shelley"), this edition includes a generous selection of letters, including much of his courtship correspondence with Elizabeth Barrett and more general correspondence that cast unique light on the poems themselves. The text has been edited from Browning's last collected edition and annotated throughout in an accessible yet scholarly fashion. Noted Browning scholar Daniel Karlin contributes a lively introduction.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A splendid one-volume Browning."--Choice

From the Back Cover

Studies in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Literature is an exciting new series of lively, original and authoritative critical studies aimed at the student and general reader. Each book takes as its subject an author, genre or single text. Some titles guide students through the perplexing cross-current of critical debate by offering fresh and forthright reappraisals of their subject. Others offer new and timely studies of less familiar subjects which are of importance and value to the student. The series avoids a uniform critical identity or tight ideological approach, allowing the authors to explore their subject in their own way, taking account of recent changes in critical perspective.


Robert Browning wrote some of the most powerful and original poetry of the Victorian period, but he remains a difficult and controversial figure. This study aims to clarify and reassess Browning's poetry, exploring his major ideas, themes and poetic forms and placing his work within the cultural and political milieu in which he worked.

The study is organised as a sequence of thematic chapters, which trace the development of Browning's poetry. Each focuses on a subject which goes to the heart of Browning's life and work including his attitudes to love and marriage and his political and philosophical ideas. The authors refer to the full range of Browning's work, but centre discussion on a core group of poems which can thus be seen from a variety of perspectives. A detailed chronology situates Browning's career within its wider historical and cultural framework.

Written by two acknowledged experts on Browning, this study contributes a considerable body of new research to the ongoing critical debate. The authors adopt different - but not conflicting - approaches and the result is a study which fully explores the complexities of Browning's challenging and rewarding work.

John Woolford is Reader in English at King's College University of London and Daniel Karlin is Professor of English at University College London. Both authors have written prolifically on Browning and are joint editors of The Poems of Browning in the Longman Annotated English Poets Series, published to critical acclaim in 1991.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 864 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; annotated edition edition (April 10, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0192823728
• ISBN-13: 978-0192823724
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,761,836 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)