Browning: Poems: Edited by Peter Washington - Hardcover

by Robert Browning (Author), Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Author), Peter Washington (Editor)

The Brownings' astonishing romantic and poetic relationship is here preserved in a beautiful and lasting hardcover volume. AN EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY POCKET POET.

Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning are without parallel in the nineteenth century: celebrated poets, they became equally famous for their marriage. Still popular more than a century after their deaths, their poetry vividly reflects the unique nature of their relationship.

This collection presents the Brownings' work in the context of their lives: the early years and their initial friendship, their courtship and marriage, the fifteen happy years they spent living in Italy until Elizabeth's death. Whether in short poems such as Elizabeth's "Hector in the Garden" and Robert's "Natural Magic," or in extracts from longer works such as Aurora Leigh and Pauline, the great themes they shared are all represented: love, marriage, illicit passion, England and Italy, childhood, religion, poetry, and nature. Elizabeth's famous Sonnets from the Portuguese, based on their love affair, is included in its entirety.

The poems are augmented with a generous selection of the marvelous letters the Brownings wrote to each other.

Everyman's Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free cream-colored paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket.

Front Jacket

Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning are without parallel in the nineteenth century: celebrated poets, they became equally famous for their marriage. Still popular more than a century after their deaths, their poetry vividly reflects the unique nature of their relationship.
This collection presents the Brownings' work in the context of their lives: the early years and their initial friendship, their courtship and marriage, the fifteen happy years they spent living in Italy until Elizabeth's death. Both in shorter poems such as Elizabeth's "Hector in the Garden" and Robert's "Natural Magic," or in extracts from longer works such as "Aurora Leigh and" Pauline, the great themes they shared are all represented: love, marriage, illicit passion, England and Italy, childhood, religion, poetry, and nature.
Elizabeth's famous "Sonnets from the Portuguese, based on their love affair, is included in its entirety. The poems are augmented with a generous selection of the marvellous letters the Brownings wrote to each other.

Author Biography

ROBERT BROWNING (1812-1889) was born in Camberwell, London, the son of a clerk in the Bank of England. The strongest influence on his education were the books in his father's extensive library, particularly the writings of Byron and Shelley. His dramatic poem Paracelsus, published in 1835, established his reputation and brought him the friendship of the actor-manager William Macready. When Macready's eldest son Willie was ill in bed, Browning wrote for the boy's entertainment the poem of The Pied Piper, a story he remembered from his own childhood. After its appearance in print in 1842, it became a children's classic, attracting new illustrators in every generation.

In 1846 Robert Browning married a fellow well-known poet, ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING; Elizabeth's work is now considered among the most accomplished of the Victorian period. The couple eloped to Italy where they lived until Elizabeth's death in 1861. Robert then returned to England to live with his only sister Sarianna, but later he went back to Italy, where he died at the Rezzonico Palace in Venice.

PETER WASHINGTON is the editor of many of the Everyman's Library Pocket Poets, including Love Poems, and is the author of Madame Blavatsky's Baboon: A History of the Mystics, Mediums, and Misfits Who Brought Spiritualism to America.