Poems of Robert Browning.

BROWNING, Robert.

Item Number: 131955

London: Oxford University Press, 1925.

Finely bound example of the poems of Browning. Octavo, bound in full morocco by Sangorski and Sutcliffe with gilt titles a tooling to the spine in six compartments within raised bands, gilt ruling and titles to the front panel, gilt turn-ins and inner dentelles, all edges gilt, patterned endpapers, tissue-guarded frontispiece portrait of Browning. In near fine condition.

Robert Browning was an English poet and playwright whose dramatic monologues put him high among the Victorian poets. He was noted for irony, characterization, dark humor, social commentary, historical settings and challenging vocabulary and syntax. His career began well – the long poems Pauline (1833) and Paracelsus (1835) were acclaimed – but his reputation fell back for a time – his 1840 poem Sordello was seen as wilfully obscure – and took over a decade to recover, by which time he had moved from Shelleyan forms to a more personal style. In 1846 Browning married fellow poet Elizabeth Barrett and moved to Italy. By her death in 1861 he had published the collection Men and Women (1855). His Dramatis Personae (1864) and book-length epic poem The Ring and the Book made him a leading poet.