This volume in the 21st-Century Oxford Authors series offers students and readers a comprehensive selection of the work of Robert Browning (1812-1889). Accompanied by full scholarly apparatus, this is the first one-volume fully annotated edition of Browning's poetry. It presents work written across the breadth of his career, from the very first poem he published, Pauline, to Asolando, the volume that was published on the day that he died.

The text chosen is, wherever possible, the text of the poem as it was first published by Browning himself, and as a consequence the volume also constitutes a kind of biography that enables students to understand Browning's development over the course of his life. The edition reveals a poet who began as a bold experimentalist, and who continued to experiment throughout a writing career of more than fifty years. Browning is best known for his dramatic monologues, and the dramatic monologues are fully represented in this volume, but he was also a narrative poet, a poet of philosophical reflection, and a poet who fashioned an extraordinary variety of lyric measures. This volume reveals Browning as a far more versatile poet than he is often taken to be. There are two important prose items, an essay on Shelley and a letter to Ruskin which clarify Browning's intellectual stance. The Notes include brief headnotes to each poem followed by detailed annotation, and they assist the reader in developing a full understanding of these masterful poems.

Explanatory notes and commentary are included, to enhance the study, understanding, and enjoyment of these works, and the edition includes an Introduction to the life and works of Browning, and a Chronology.

Richard Cronin, Professor of English Literature, University of Glasgow,Dorothy McMillan, Honorary Research Fellow, University of Glasgow

Richard Cronin has published very widely on nineteenth-century literature. After teaching for many years at the University of Glasgow, he has recently been appointed to a chair at Oxford Brookes University.


Dorothy McMillan is an Honorary Research Fellow of the University of Glasgow, and has published widely with a particular focus on Scottish literature and poetry by women.

Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
Chronology
A Note on the Selection and Its Ordering
PAULINE: A FRAGMENT OF A CONFESSION (1833)
FROM THE MONTHLY REPOSITORY, VOL. X, N.S. 1836, 43-44; 45-46
[Porphyria's Lover] Porphyria
[Johannes Agricola in Meditation] Johannes
BELLS AND POMEGRANATES, NO. I, PIPPA PASSES, (1841)
Pippa Passes
FROM BELLS AND POMEGRANATES, No. III, DRAMATIC LYRICS, (1842)
[My Last Duchess] Italy and France: II. France
[Soliloquy] Camp and Cloister: II. Cloister (Spanish)
In a Gondola
Artemis Prologuizes
Waring
The Pied Piper of Hamelin
FROM HOOD'S MAGAZINE, vol. 1, June 1844; vol. 2, July 1844; vol. 3, March 1845; vol. 3, April 1845
The Laboratory
Garden Fancies: I. The Flower's Name; II. Sibrandus Schnaburgensis
[The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St. Praxed's Church] The Tomb at St. Praxed's
The Flight of the Duchess, sections 1-9
LETTER TO ELIZABETH BARRETT, 10 JANUARY, 1845
FROM BELLS AND POMEGRANATES, NO. VII, DRAMATIC ROMANCES AND LYRICS (1845)
How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix
Pictor Ignotus
[The Italian in England] Italy in England
[The Englishman in Italy] England in Italy
The Lost Leader
Home Thoughts from Abroad, I & III
Saul, sections 1-9
FROM LETTERS OF PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY (1852)
Introductory Essay
FROM MEN AND WOMEN, I & II (1855)
I.
Love among the Ruins
A Lovers' Quarrel
Evelyn Hope
Up at a Villa--Down in the City
A Woman's Last Word
Fra Lippo Lippi
A Toccata of Galuppi's
By the Fireside
Any Wife to Any Husband
An Epistle EL Karshish, the Arab Physician
Mesmerism
A Serenade at the Villa
My Star
'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came'
Respectability
A Light Woman
The Statue and the Bust
Love in a Life
Life in a Love
How It Strikes a Contemporary
The Last Ride Together
The Patriot: An Old Story
Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha
Bishop Blougram's Apology
Memorabilia
II.
Andrea del Sarto
In a Year
Old Pictures in Florence
In a Balcony
'De Gustibus--'
Cleon
Two in the Campagna
A Grammarian's Funeral
Transcendentalism
One Word More
LETTER TO JOHN RUSKIN, 10 DECEMBER, 1855
LETTER TO EUPHRASIA (FANNY) HAWORTH, 20 JULY, 1861
FROM DRAMATIS PERSONAE (1864)
[James Lee's Wife] James Lee
Gold Hair: A Legend of Pornic
Dis Aliter Visum
Abt Vogler
Rabbi Ben Ezra
Death in the Desert
Caliban upon Setebos
Confessions
Prospice
Youth and Art
A Face
Mr Sludge the Medium
FROM HELEN'S TOWER, CLANDEBOYE (1870)
Helen's Tower
FROM FIFINE AT THE FAIR (1872)
Prologue: Amphibian
Epilogue: the Householder
THE INN ALBUM (1875)
FROM PACCHIAROTTO (1876)
House
Bifurcation
Numpholeptus
A Forgiveness
LA SAISIAZ (1878)
FROM DRAMATIC IDYLS, 2ND SERIES (1880)
Pan and Luna
FROM JOCOSERIA (1883)
Never the Time
FROM FERISHTAH'S FANCIES (1884)
Epilogue
FROM ANDREW REID, ED., WHY I AM A LIBERAL (1885)
Why I am a Liberal
FROM PARLEYINGS WITH PERSONS OF IMPORTANCE IN THEIR DAY (1887)
VI. With Gerard de Lairesse
FROM THE ATHENEUM, JULY 13, 1889
FROM ASOLANDO (1889)
Development
Epilogue
Notes
Index of Titles and First Lines