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Home , Andrea del Sarto (poem), Browning Society, Dramatic Lyrics, Edward Moxon, Paracelsus (poem), Pippa Passes

Chronology of Browning’s Literary Life

1793 Birth of actor and theatre manager William Charles Macready. 1795 Birth of . 1806 Birth of John Stuart Mill and EBB. 1809 Birth of Alfred Tennyson. 1812 RB born at , South-East . 1819 Birth of John Ruskin. c. 1820 RB studies at Revd Thomas Ready’s school, Peckham. 1822 Birth of Matthew Arnold. Death of Shelley. 1826 RB reads Shelley, Miscellaneous Poems. Puts together Incondita, unpublished volume of poems, later destroyed. 1828 Mill reads Wordsworth’s miscellaneous poems in the two-volume edition of 1815, and emerges from a severe depression. 1828–9 RB attends London University. Tennyson’s ‘Timbuctoo’ wins Chancellor’s poetry prize at Cambridge. c. 1830 RB belongs to ‘the Set’ or ‘the Colloquials’, informal literary and debating group and contributes to its journal, the Trifler. 1833 Monthly Repository publishes Mill’s ‘What is Poetry?’ and ‘The Two Kinds of Poetry’. EBB, Prometheus Bound. Pauline (publ. anony- mously by Saunders & Otley): no sales and few reviews. 1834 RB journeys to St Petersburg with the Russian Consul-General. Meets Amédée de Ripert-Monclar. 1835 : some critical success. RB becomes friendly with John Forster, editor of the Examiner, and with William Macready. 1836 ‘Madhouse Cells’ published under the name ‘Z’ in Fox’s Monthly Repository. Meets Thomas Carlyle. Forster publishes a Life of Strafford, partly written by RB. Meets Walter Savage Landor. Macready requests a play. 1837 Strafford performed five times at Covent Garden: numerous reviews, several good. Reads Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus. Carlyle, The French Revolution. 1838 RB’s first trip to Italy: visits , Treviso, Bassano, , Padua and Asolo. EBB, The Seraphim. 1840 : bad notices. Attends Carlyle’s lectures On Heroes and Hero- Worship. 1841 Bells and Pomegranates, a series of cheaply produced pamphlets (publ. Edward Moxon), begins with . 1842 Bells and Pomegranates continues with a play King Victor and King Charles. Anonymous essay on Chatterton in the Foreign . Bells and Pomegranates continues with . 1843 Bells and Pomegranates continues with two more plays, The Return of the Druses and A Blot in the ‘Scutcheon. A Blot has three unsuc- cessful performances at Drury Lane. Arnold wins Newdigate Prize for ‘Cromwell’. Carlyle, Past and Present. Ruskin, Modern Painters I.

209 210 Chronology of Browning‘s Literary Life

1844 Bells and Pomegranates continues with Colombe’s Birthday, RB’s last stage play. Journey to Italy: visits Naples, Rome and . EBB contributes to R. H. Horne’s survey of contemporary literature and culture, A New Spirit of the Age. EBB, Poems. 1845 RB begins correspondence with EBB. First visits her on May 20. Bells and Pomegranates continues with Dramatic Romances and Lyrics. Carlyle, Oliver Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches. 1846 Bells and Pomegranates ends with two closet dramas, Luria and A Soul’s Tragedy. Marriage to EBB on 12 September; they depart for Italy, 19 September. Ruskin, Modern Painters II. 1847 RB and EBB settle in Florence at . reads Pauline ‘with warm admiration’ in the British Museum. He guesses RB is the author and writes to him. 1849 Poems in two volumes (publ. Chapman & Hall). Sordello among a number of works excluded. Son ‘Pen’ born. Death of Browning’s mother. Unauthorized edition of Poems published in the US by Ticknor, Reed & Fields. 1850 Christmas-Eve and Easter Day. EBB, Poems including Sonnets from the Portuguese, love sonnets written during the courtship. Tennyson Poet Laureate. 1851 EBB, Casa Guidi Windows. Brownings travel to Paris and visit England. Ruskin, Stones of Venice I. 1852 Essay on Shelley introduces a collection of Shelley’s letters (publ. Moxon). Letters turn out to be forged, book withdrawn. Meets Joseph Milsand. Trip to England. Meets Ruskin. Arnold, Empedocles on Etna, and Other Poems. 1853 Ruskin, Stones of Venice II and III. 1855 Men and Women: no great success. 1856 EBB, Aurora Leigh: a hit with critics and public. Bequest from leaves Brownings financially secure. Ruskin, Modern Painters III and IV. 1857 Arnold Professor of Poetry at Oxford, inaugural lecture ‘On the Modern Element in Literature’. Ruskin, Elements of Drawing and The Political Economy of Art. 1858–65 Carlyle, History of Frederick the Great. 1860 EBB, Poems Before Congress. RB comes across the ‘Old Yellow Book’ on a market-stall in Florence. Ruskin, Modern Painters V. 1861 Death of EBB on 29 June. RB returns to live in London, taking regular summer trips abroad. Arnold, On Translating Homer. 1862 Selections from RB’s poetry, chosen by Forster and B. W. Proctor (dated 1863). EBB, Last Poems. Arnold re-elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford. 1863 Poetical Works in three volumes, including Sordello. Meets Julia Wedgwood. 1864 Dramatis Personae; goes to a second edition. Beginning of RB’s popularity. 1865 Revised Poetical Works (publ. Chapman & Hall). Selected poems (publ. Moxon’s Miniature Poets). Julia Wedgwood breaks off friendship. Chronology of Browning‘s Literary Life 211

1866 Death of Senior. 1867 Academic honours, an MA from Oxford and a fellowship at Balliol. Sir Francis Doyle Professor of Poetry at Oxford. 1868 Poetical Works in six volumes, including Pauline (publ. Smith, Elder). Refuses rectorship of St Andrews University. 1868–9 Serial publication of (publ. Smith, Elder): enthusiastic critical reception. Arnold, Culture and Anarchy. 1869 Attacked by Alfred Austin in ‘The Poetry of the Period’ published in the Temple Bar (June). Meets Queen Victoria. Refuses to marry Louisa, Lady Ashburton. 1870 Second revised reissue of Poetical Works. 1871 Balaustion’s Adventure: a popular success, several editions issued. Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Saviour of Society. 1872 Second edition of The Ring and the Book. Also Selections from the Poetical Works, to be reissued many times. Fifine at the Fair poorly received and offends Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who believes it to be an attack on him along the lines of R. W. Buchanan’s article, ‘The Fleshly School of Poetry’. 1873 Red Cotton Night-Cap Country. Deaths of Mill and Macready. 1875 Aristophanes’ Apology, The Inn-Album and a third revised reissue of the six-volume Poetical Works. 1876 Pacchiarotto and How He Worked in Distemper: with Other Poems. 1877 Translation: The Agamemnon of Aeschylus. Again refused Rectorship of St Andrews. Carlyle, Characteristics. 1878 La Saisiaz and The Two Poets of Croisic. 1879 Dramatic Idyls. Honorary LL D from Cambridge. 1880 Selections from the Poetical Works, Second Series, companion volume to the 1872 selection. Dramatic Idyls, Second Series. 1881 First meeting of Frederick Furnivall and Emily Hickey’s . Death of Carlyle. 1882 Honorary DCL from Oxford. 1883 Jocoseria successful, reaches several editions. 1884 Honorary LLD from Edinburgh University. Ferishtah’s Fancies very popular, reaches several editions. 1885 Refuses Presidency of the new Shelley Society. 1887 Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in Their Day. 1888–9 Poetical Works in 16 volumes. Death of Arnold. 1889 Asolando. RB dies in Venice. 1891 Buried in Poets’ Corner, Westminster Abbey. 1892 Death of Tennyson. 1900 Death of Ruskin. Notes

Preface

1. The standard biographies of EBB are Gardner B. Taplin’s The Life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (London, 1957) and Margaret Forster’s convincing demolition of the Andromeda myth, Elizabeth Barrett Browning: a Biography (London, 1988). 2. Stone’s invaluable book is in the Macmillan Women Writers series. She outlines the contributions of Helen Cooper, Cora Kaplan, Angela Leighton, Dorothy Mermin and others. See also Andrew Stauffer, ‘Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s (Re)visions of Slavery’, English Language Notes, 34.4 (1997) 29–48; Sarah Brophy, ‘Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point” and the Politics of Interpretation’, Victorian Poetry, 36.3 (1998) 273–88; David Reide, ‘Elizabeth Barrett: The Poet as Angel’, Victorian Poetry, 32.2 (1994) 121–39; Pauline Simonsen, ‘Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Redundant Women’, Victorian Poetry, 35.4 (1997) 509–32. 3. Pioneering work on the Brownings and gender includes Nina Auerbach, ‘Robert Browning’s Last Word’, Victorian Poetry, 22.2 (1984) 161–73; Susan Brown, ‘Pompilia: the Woman (in) Question’, Victorian Poetry, 34.1 (1996) 15–37; Laura E. Haigwood, ‘Gender-to-Gender Anxiety and Influence in Robert Browning’s Men and Women’, Browning Institute Studies, 14 (1986) 97–118; Marjorie Stone, ‘Bile and the Brownings: A New Poem by RB, EBB’s “My Heart and I,” and New Questions about the Browning’s Marriage’, in Robert Browning in Contexts, ed. John Woolford (Winfield, KS, 1998) 213–31; John Woolford, ‘Elizabeth Barrett and the Wordsworthian Sublime’, in Criticism, 45.1 (1995) 36–56. 4. EBB to Richard Hengist Horne, 1 May 1843: Kelley VII, p. 99. Long before EBB was in a position to directly affect Browning’s composition, she praised the nobility and passion of his poetry but found it lacking in harmony: ‘And the verse . . the lyrics . . where is the ear?’ 5. RB to EBB, 13 July 1845: Kelley X, p. 306: ‘I like so much to fancy that you see, and will see, what I do as I see it, while it is doing, as nobody else in the world should, certainly.’ 6. 30 November 1846: Kelley XIV, p. 368. 7. Maisie Ward, The Tragi-Comedy of Pen Browning (London, 1972) p. 131. 8. movies.excite.com: The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934) [database online – cited 24 February 2000]. Available at http://movies.excite.com. 9. Rudolf Besier, The Barretts of Wimpole Street (London, 1930) p. 57. 10. 23 February 1846: Kelley XII, p. 98. 11. EBB to Sarianna Browning [end of March 1861]: Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, ed. Frederick Kenyon (London, 1897) II, p. 434. 12. Browning didn’t believe in monarchs, spirits or long-haired boys. See Margaret Forster’s Biography, pp. 263–5, 279–81 and 238–41 for an account of these marital disagreements.

212 Notes 213

Introduction: ‘Browning in Westminster Abbey’

1. Litzinger and Smalley, p. 530. 2. Kelley III, pp. 340, 344. 3. See Henry Jones, Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher (London, 1891). 4. See Oscar Wilde, ‘The True Function and Value of Criticism’ (1890): Litzinger and Smalley, pp. 524–6. 5. Horace, Odes III, 30, 1. The first words were a familiar tag in the nineteenth century; Browning wrote to Monclar, 5 December 1834 (Kelley III, p. 109): ‘Paracelsus is done! exegi monumentum – good or ill, it is done.’ 6. ‘George Chapman’, in Swinburne XII, p. 146. 7. Letter to John Ruskin, 10 December 1855: Woolford and Karlin, p. 257. 8. The Disappearance of God: Five Nineteenth-Century Writers (Cambridge, MA, 1963) p. 118. 9. My translation from Les fins de l’homme: a partir du travail de Jacques Derrida (Paris, 1981) p. 229.

Chapter 1 Pauline and Mill

1. Sarah Flower to W. J. Fox, 31 May 1827: quoted I, p. 3. 2. Letter to EBB, 3 August 1845: Kelley XI, p. 15. Browning was delighted to find that Elizabeth Barrett was attracted to chapel worship. 3. Letter to Amédée de Ripert-Monclar, 9 August 1837: Kelley III, p. 264. 4. These are collected in Penguin II, pp. 935–40 and Longman I, pp. 5–13. 5. Letter quoted Longman I, p. 4. 6. See also Marjorie Levinson, The Romantic Fragment Poem: a Critique of a Form (London, 1986). 7. John Maynard, Browning’s Youth (Cambridge, MA, 1977) p. 139. 8. Letter to EBB, 11 February 1845: Kelley X, p. 69. 9. The Foreign Quarterly Review (July 1842): Longman II, p. 488. 10. Bloom and Munich, p. 2. 11. Longman I, p. 17. The notes are given in full in W. S. Peterson and F. L. Standley, ‘The J. S. Mill Marginalia in Robert Browning’s Pauline: A History and Transcription’, PBSA, LXVI (1972) 135–70. 12. Browning critics Harold Bloom and Herbert Tucker do far more than iden- tify Shelley as a source for certain Browningesque moments. These critics have provided an alternative to the prosaic task of filling in the gaps or translating the unknown into the known. Their readings enact or extend the movements of Browning’s poetry, performing where explication alone would stifle its remarkable impulsion. Their work shares a symptomatic force with earlier hostile Browning criticism, and adds to that force a capacity for invaluable reflection on the critical process. 13. Notice of Pauline, August 1833: Kelley III, p. 346. 14. Letter to Amédée Ripert-Monclar, 9 August 1837: Kelley III, p. 265. 15. Letter to Euphrasia Fanny Haworth, I July 1837: Kelley III, p. 256. 16. Letter to Fox, 4 March 1833: Kelley III, p. 73. 17. Review of Pauline, Monthly Repository, April 1833: Kelley III, p. 341. 214 Notes

18. Letter to Fox, 16 April 1835: Kelley III, p. 134. Browning refers to Fox’s review of Pauline in The Monthly Repository. 19. Notice of Pauline, 23 March 1833: Kelley III, p. 340. 20. Kelley III, p. 343. 21. Review of Pauline, 14 April 1833: Kelley III, p. 345. 22. ‘The True Function and Value of Criticism’, The Nineteenth Century, July 1890: Litzinger and Smalley, p. 526. 23. Marked at ll. 163–7, 173–80, 222–9. Other passages were ‘very fine’: ll. 429–31; ‘finely painted’: ll. 447–9; ‘striking’: ll. 574–6; ‘deeply true’: ll. 678–80; and ‘good descriptive writing’: ll. 767–77. 24. Allen Cunningham, review of Pauline, 6 April 1833: Kelley III, p. 345. 25. ‘The Poets of the Day: Batch the Third’, December 1833: Kelley III, p. 346. 26. Letter to Fox, 4 March 1833: Kelley III, p. 74. 27. Letter to Ruskin, 10 December 1855: Woolford and Karlin, p. 258. 28. ‘George Chapman’, Swinburne XII, p. 146. 29. Collected for publication in Mill’s Dissertations and Discussions, 2nd edn (1867) under the title ‘Thoughts on Poetry and Its Varieties’. 30. Trinity College, Dublin. Quoted in Maisie Ward, Robert Browning and His World: Two Robert Brownings? (London, 1969) p. 221.

Chapter 2 Sordello and the Reviewers

1. Letters to Amédée de Ripert-Monclar, 5 December 1834 and 9 August 1837: Kelley III, pp. 109, 265; to William Macready, 28 May 1836: Kelley III, p. 173; to Fanny Haworth, 1 July 1837 and 24 July 1838: Kelley III, pp. 256–7 and IV, pp. 67–8. 2. Letter to James T. Fields, 9 October 1855: Ian Jack, ‘Browning on Sordello and Men and Women: Unpublished Letters to James T. Fields’, HLQ, XLV (1982) 190. 3. The Athenaeum, 30 May 1840: Kelley IV, pp. 422, 424. 4. The Monthly Chronicle, May 1840: Kelley IV, p. 421. 5. The Spectator, 15 August 1846: Kelley IV, p. 416. 6. The Church of England Quarterly, October 1842: Kelley VI, p. 388. 7. EBB to RB, 9 September 1845: Kelley XI, p. 67. 8. Letter to James T. Fields, in Jack, op. cit., p. 196. 9. Letter to Ruskin, 10 December 1855: Woolford and Karlin, p. 257. 10. Joseph Milsand, ‘La Poesie Expressive et Dramatique en Angleterre: M. Robert Browning’, Revue Contemporaine, 15 September 1856, p. 523. 11. Sidney defends poets for their use of invented names, citing the use of ficti- tious names John-a-stiles and John-a-nokes by lawyers to describe the two parties in a legal action. See Miscellaneous Prose of Sir Philip Sidney, eds Katherine Duncan-Jones and Jan van Dorsten (Oxford, 1973) p.102. 12. Letter to Domett [23 March 1840]: Kelley IV, p. 261. 13. Letter to W. G. Kingsland, 27 November 1868: quoted Woolford and Karlin, p. 184. They also supply the Wordsworth quotation from ‘A Poet’s Epitaph’: ‘You must love him, ere to you / He will seem worthy of your love.’ 14. Letter to John Gisborne, 22 October 1821: The Letters of , ed. F. L. Jones (Oxford, 1964) II, p. 363. Notes 215

15. Letter to Fanny Haworth, [May, 1840]: Kelley IV, p. 269. 16. Letter to EBB, 13 January 1845: Kelley X, p. 22.

Chapter 3 Drama, Macready and Dramatic Poetry

1. Letter to Domett, 22 May 1842: Kelley V, p. 355. 2. This phrase occurs in the Advertisement to Dramatic Lyrics (1842) and is quoted by Browning in his preface to the reprinting of Pauline for his 1868 Poetical Works. 3. See Andrew Bennett and Nicholas Royle, An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory, 2nd edn (London, 1999) pp. 103–4. 4. See Longman I, p. 23 for contemporary accounts. 5. Woolford and Karlin, p. 256. 6. Letter to Macready, [?late April 1841]: Kelley V, p. 37. 7. 27 February 1845: Kelley X, p. 101. 8. The Novels and Tales of Henry James (26 vols), reissued by Augustus M. Kelley (New York, 1971–6) XVII, pp. xii–xiii. 9. Letter to Domett 13 July 1846: Kelley XIII, p. 156. 10. The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry (Oxford, 1973) p. 96. Bloom defines criticism as ‘the art of knowing the hidden roads that go from poem to poem’. 11. 29 March 1846: Kelley XII, p. 187. 12. Letter to Domett, May 22, 1842: Kelley V, p. 356. George Darley’s play was Thomas à Becket: A Dramatic Chronicle (1840). The ‘Eastern play’ is The Return of the Druses (1843), fourth in the Bells and Pomegranates series. The ‘metaphysical play’ is A Soul’s Tragedy (1846), seventh of Bells and Pomegranates. 13. Letter to Domett, 15 May 1843: Kelley VII, p. 125. 14. The ‘Alkestis’ (Browning adopted unconventional spellings of many Greek names) is closely embedded in Balaustion’s Adventure, whereas the ‘Herakles’ translation was separately composed and the MS of Aristophanes’ Apology is physically divided around it. 15. The Diaries of William Charles Macready 1833–1851, 2 vols, ed. William Toynbee (London, 1912) I, p. 355. 16. Herbert Tucker, Browning’s Beginnings: the Art of Disclosure (Minneapolis, 1980) p. 120. 17. 22 May 1842: Kelley V, p. 356. 18. 28 May 1836: Kelley III, p. 173. 19. 20 December 1835: Kelley III, p. 161. Browning’s emphasis. 20. Aristotle’s Treatise on Poetry, 2nd edn (2 vols), trans. Thomas Twining, (London, 1812) I, pp. 118–19. 21. Westland Marston, quoted in Richard Cave, ‘Romantic Drama in Performance’, The Romantic Theatre: an International Symposium, ed. Richard Cave (Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire, 1986) p. 96. 22. [9 August] 1840: Kelley IV, p. 294. 23. Bloom and Munich, p. 38. 24. Letter to EBB, 13 January 1845: Kelley X, p. 22. 25. EBB to RB, 21 July 1845: Kelley X, p. 315. 216 Notes

26. W. L. Phelps, Robert Browning (Hamden, CT, 1968 [c.1932]) p. 200. 27. 10 January 1845: Kelley X, p. 17. 28. Betty Miller, Robert Browning: a Portrait (London, 1952) p. 283. 29. The Courtship of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett (Oxford, 1987) p. 182. 30. 27 February 1845: Kelley X, p. 103. 31. [10 September 1846]: Kelley XIII, p. 355.

Chapter 4 Browning’s Now versus Carlyle’s Today

1. On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History [1841]: Carlyle V, p. 78. 2. ABC of Reading (London, 1961) p. 46. 3. ‘Three Cantos: I’, Poetry X, June 1917, p. 114. 4. See also Betty Flowers, Browning and the Modern Tradition (London, 1976). Herbert Tucker’s ‘Epiphany and Browning: Character Made Manifest’, PMLA, 107 (1992) 1208–21 argues convincingly that Browning could still teach the modernists a thing or two about privileged moments. 5. Cornelia J. Pearsall reads the figuration of a female body in the stone of ‘The Bishop Orders His Tomb’: ‘Browning and the Poetics of the Sepulchral Body’, Victorian Poetry, 30.1 (Spring 1992) 43–61. 6. The importance of touch and its brushing against the intangible in the Sordello passage and in ‘Two in the Campagna’ recalls Browning’s formula- tion of his poetic practice: ‘by various artifices I try to make shift by touches and bits and outlines which succeed if they bear the conception from me to you’ (Woolford and Karlin, p. 257). Perhaps these are in turn versions of Wordsworth’s ‘unimaginable touch of time’. 7. Paul de Man, ‘Literary History and Literary Modernity’, Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism, 2nd edn (London, 1983) p. 161. 8. Letter to EBB, 26 February 1845: Kelley X, p. 98. 9. See also the ‘ruined palace step / At Venice’ where Browning muses during a pause in the writing of Sordello (III, ll. 676–7) and the stall where he found the Old Yellow Book ‘precisely on that palace-step / Which, meant for lounging slaves o’ the Medici, / Now serves re-venders to display their ware’ (I, ll. 50–2). Both steps mark a crossing between the poem of life and the authored poem. 10. This was only Browning’s ninth letter. His first had already said ‘I do, as I say, love [your] Books with all my heart – and I love you too’ (10 January 1845: Kelley X, p. 17). He overstepped the bounds in a letter (missing from the collection) of 21 or 22 May 1845, a day or two after the first meeting. Elizabeth Barrett told him to ‘forget’ so that his ‘fancies’ ‘will die out between you & me alone, like a misprint between you & the printer’ (23 May 1845: Kelley X, p. 232). 11. Letter to Domett, 23 February 1845: Kelley X, p. 89. 12. ‘Cavalier Tunes’ polemically introduces Dramatic Lyrics as a demonstration of the technique of dramatic sympathy. Browning’s Cavalier persona was the antithesis of his own Republican position. 13. 21 August 1846: Kelley XIII, p. 276. 14. Letter to Fanny Haworth, [May 1840]: Kelley IV, p. 269. Notes 217

15. Carlyle to Browning, 21 June 1841: Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle XIII, p. 155. 16. William Allingham: A Diary, eds Helen Allingham and Dollie Radford (London, 1908) p. 310. 17. Charles Richard Sanders, ‘The Carlyle–Browning Correspondence and Relationship’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, LVII (1974–5) 452. 18. Sartor Resartus (1833) has Teufelsdrockh asking ‘Who am I; what is this ME?’ and deciding that ‘The secret of Man’s Being is still like the Sphinx’s secret: a riddle that he cannot rede’ (Carlyle I, pp. 41–2). 19. Elizabeth Barrett and Richard H. Horne, unsigned essay, A New Spirit of the Age (New York, 1844) pp. 333–48, in Thomas Carlyle: the Critical Heritage, ed. J. P. Seigel (1995) p. 242. 20. EBB to RB, 27 February 1845: Kelley X, p. 101. 21. Letter to EBB, [28 June 1846]: Kelley XIII, p. 90. 22. Elizabeth Barrett’s Aurora Leigh (1857) takes the contrasting view that the most fitting subjects for poetry are to be found in contemporary settings and that a poet should not reject his own ties to seek inspiration from earlier civilizations. 23. EBB to RB, 17 February 1845: Kelley X, p. 81. 24. Letter to EBB, 26 February 1845: Kelley X, p. 98. 25. Margaret Fuller wrote to Emerson at about the same time: ‘For the higher kinds of poetry [Carlyle] has no sense, and his talk on that subject is delightfully and gorgeously absurd’ (Sanders, op. cit., p. 216). 26. Ibid., p. 230. 27. Letter to Domett, 31 [sic] September 1842: Kelley VI, p. 89. 28. EBB to RB, 16 May 1846: Kelley XII, p. 334. 29. The ‘Essay on Shelley’ refers to past poetry which has been assimilated into popular consciousness as ‘the straw of last year’s harvest’. 30. Letter to EBB, 17 May 1846: Kelley XII, p. 335. 31. Letters of Thomas Carlyle: to John Stuart Mill, and Robert Browning, ed. Alexander Carlyle (London, 1923) p. 291. 32. Letter to Isa Blagden, 19 September 1872: Dearest Isa: Letters of Robert Browning to Isabella Blagden, ed. Edward McAleer (Austin, TX, 1951) p. 385. 33. Athenaeum, 30 May 1840: Kelley IV, p. 422. See also Richard D. Altick, ‘Browning’s ’, Journal of English and German Philology, LVIII (January 1959) 24–8. 34. Browning was acquainted with New England transcendentalism through his American friends in Florence in the late 1840s and early 1850s. Elizabeth Barrett and Richard Horne’s essay on Carlyle has an epigraph from Emerson, who founded the Transcendental Club with Frederick H. Hedge and others in 1836. His transcendentalism had, according to Cabot’s 1887 biography of Emerson, ‘no very direct connection with the transcen- dental philosophy of Germany, the philosophy of Kant and his successors’. Emerson instead wished to transcend conventional or traditional opinions. 35. Ann Wordsworth, ‘Communication Different’, Browning Society Notes, 13.1 (n. d.) 14. 36. Longman I, p. 665, note to ll. 116–224. 37. Letter to EBB, 19 December 1845: Kelley XI, p. 248. 38. I am indebted to Catherine Maxwell for this connection. 218 Notes

39. Carlyle to RB, 27 January 1856: Sanders, op. cit., p. 445. 40. Ibid., p. 456. 41. Écrits: A Selection, tr. Alan Sheridan (London, 1980) p. 34.

Chapter 5 Browning and Ruskin: Reading and Seeing

1. Letter to Joseph Milsand, 24 February 1853: N. Thomas, ‘Deux lettres inédites de Robert Browning à Joseph Milsand’, Revue Germanique, 1921, XII, 253. 2. Letter to EBB, 13 January 1845: Kelley X, p. 22. 3. Letter to EBB, 26 February 1845: Kelley X, p. 99. 4. Letter to EBB, 10 January 1845: Kelley X, p. 17. 5. Harold Bloom, ‘Ruskin as Literary Critic’, in The Ringers in the Tower (London, 1971) pp. 176–7. 6. Ruskin to Revd W. L. Brown, 28 September 1847: Ruskin, XXXVI, p. 80. 7. Annotation survives in, for example, the mock-epigraphs to ‘The Heretic’s Tragedy’ and ‘Holy Cross Day’ (1855). Later on there are square-bracketed passages surrounding ‘A Death in the Desert’ and ‘’ (1864). 8. Rossetti to William Allingham, [?] April 1856: The Letters of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, eds Oswald Doughty and John Robert Wahl (Oxford, 1965) I, pp. 299–300. 9. Scott, The Talisman (Oxford, 1912) p. 103. 10. Richard Rand, ‘o’erbrimmed’, Difference in Translation, ed. Joseph F. Graham (Ithaca, NY, 1985) pp. 81–101. 11. Woolford and Karlin, p. 252. They print both Ruskin’s letter and Browning’s reply in an appendix, pp. 252–9. 12. 4 January 1846: Kelley XI, pp. 277–8. 13. The ‘font-tomb’ in this context may not only refer to the characteristic togetherness of creation and death in Browning, but to the font of type (‘the complete set or assortment of a particular sort of type’, OED) that makes possible the inscription and dissolution of names. 14. See also Chapter 6. Longman mentions the Introduction to Pippa Passes, ‘Italy in England’ (‘The Italian in England’), ‘England in Italy’ (‘The Englishman in Italy’), ‘Love Among the Ruins’, ‘By the Fire-Side’, ‘De Gustibus’, ‘Two in the Campagna’, The Ring and the Book X, and Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau. One might add Sordello, the ‘Essay on Shelley’, ‘Childe Roland’, ‘Cleon,’ ‘Inapprehensiveness’ and ‘Bad Dreams’. 15. The Inn-Album (1875) uses Ruskin’s name when the Young Man describes the ambitions abandoned under the worldly influence of the Elder Man. Ruskin devoted much thought to the best way to spend the fortune he inherited from his father. In 1859 he gave a lecture on the subject, The Political Economy of Art (Ruskin XVI, pp. 102–3). The young Man had once imagined a life blending Ruskinian and Shelleyan characteristics: philanthropy, isolation in a tower by the sea, chemistry, botany and star-gazing: ‘Letting my cash accumulate the while / In England – to lay out in lump at last / As Ruskin should direct me!’ (I, ll. 300–2). Ruskin wanted to regard poetry as a benign force; his letter to EBB in April 1855 Notes 219

makes writing into a form of philanthropy: ‘you ought to consider with yourself, not merely how the poetry may be made absolutely as good as possible, but how also it may be put into a form which shall do as much good as possible’ (Ruskin XXXVI, p. 196). This kind of advice is more appropriate to the politically ambitious author of ‘The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point’, the boldly feminist Aurora Leigh and Poems before Congress, than for her husband who rarely wanted to do good in the world with his poetry. 16. Bloom and Munich, p. 11.

Chapter 6 Arnold and Translation: The Ring and the Book

1. With many others: see Hillis Miller, The Disappearance of God: Five Nineteenth-Century Writers (Cambridge, MA, 1963) p. 93, and Tucker: ‘as a moralist Browning champions the imperfect as the definitive note of the human condition’, Browning’s Beginnings: the Art of Disclosure (Minneapolis, 1990) p. 4. 2. Maurice Blanchot, Friendship, trans. Catherine Mandel (Stanford, CA, 1997) p. 59. 3. Karsten Klejs Oldenberg, The Making of the Shelley Myth: an Annotated Bibliography of Criticism of Percy Bysshe Shelley 1822–1860 (London, 1988). 4. The distinctively poetic joy of this song is described in an amazing commentary by Harold Bloom in Poetry and Repression: Revisionism from Blake to Stevens (New Haven, CT, 1976) pp. 201–4. 5. Edward Trelawny, Records of Shelley, Byron and the Author (London 1858) p. 67. 6. See Andrew Bennett and Nicholas Royle, An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory, 2nd edn (London, 1999), pp. 99–109. 7. Miscellaneous Prose of Philip Sidney, eds Katherine Duncan-Jones and Jan van Dorsten (Oxford, 1973) p. 96. 8. Arnold to ‘K’ [Jane Martha Arnold Forster], 6 [September] 1858: Arnold, Letters I, p. 402. 9. Poetry and Repression: Revisionism from Blake to Stevens (New Haven, CT, 1976) p. 177. 10. For example, in the two poems that flank ‘Cleon’ in Men and Women, the hard-worked seraph in ‘The Guardian-Angel’ or the one who fabulously disguises itself as a beggar in ‘The Twins’. John Schad associates the escape of Browning’s angels with deconstruction in Victorians in Theory: from Derrida to Browning (Manchester, 1999) pp. 84–90. By contrast Arnold’s reductive description of Shelley as ‘a beautiful ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain’ lacks any sense of the power to call and be called by poetry – what you might call its catchiness (Arnold XI, p. 327). 11. This connection is conceived and developed in Catherine Maxwell’s fasci- nating Bearing Blindness: the Female Sublime from Milton to Swinburne (Manchester, forthcoming) chapter 3. 12. Letter to EBB, 29 March 1846: Kelley XII, p. 187. 13. Park Honan, Matthew Arnold: A Life (London, 1981) p. 315. 220 Notes

14. Arnold to Edward Arnold, 23 July 1867: Arnold, Letters III, p. 162. 15. Arnold to Fanny du Quaire, 9 February 1858: Letters I, p. 383. 16. ‘Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason’ – Keats to George and Tom Keats, 21, 27 (?) December 1817: Keats, The Letters of 1814–1821, ed. Hyder E. Robbins (Cambridge, 1958) I, pp. 193–4. 17. Arnold to Arthur Hugh Clough, [?early December] 1848: Arnold, Letters I, p. 128. 18. Arnold also criticizes Chapman for his un-Homeric use of language as a ‘medium’: ‘the Elizabethan poet fails to render Homer because he cannot forbear to interpose a play of thought between his object and his expres- sion ... Homer, on the other hand, sees his object and conveys it to us immediately’ (Arnold I, p. 116). 19. Yopie Prins was first to recognize the preface to Browning’s translation as a polemic against Arnold in: ‘“Violence Bridling Speech”: Browning’s Translation of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon’, Victorian Poetry, 27.3–4 (Autumn–Winter 1989) 151–70. 20. This thought is also explored in the account of translation in ‘Development’ (1889). 21. In 1879 Cambridge awarded him an honorary LL D, Oxford gave him an honorary Doctorate of Civil Law in 1882 and Edinburgh University made him an honorary LL D in 1884. 22. Arnold to Mary Penrose Arnold, 22 February 1867: Arnold, Letters III, p. 116. Doyle (1810–88) wrote the memorable recitation piece ‘The Private of the Buffs’ (Senilia, London, 1888). 23. Borges and Bloom claim Browning as a precursor of Kafka. Richard Burgin, Conversations with Jorge Luis Borges (New York, 1970) p. 73; Bloom and Munich, p. 4. 24. The Work of Fire, trans. Elizabeth Rottenberg (Stanford, CA, 1995) p. 84. 25. For the significance of alchemy see Adam Roberts, ‘The Ring and the Book: the Mage, the Alchemist and the Poet’, Victorian Poetry, 36.1 (Spring 1998) 37–46 . 26. Swinburne to Lord Houghton [Richard Monckton Milnes] [1869]: The Letters of Algernon Charles Swinburne, 2 vols eds Edmund Gosse and Thomas J. Wise (London, 1918) I, p. 77. 27. The Quarterly Review, July 1912, reprinted in Henry James, The Critical Muse: Selected Literary Criticism, ed. Roger Gard (Harmondsworth, 1987) p. 580.

Chapter 7 Publishing, Copyright and Authorship

1. 11 February 1845: Kelley X, p. 71. 2. 11 March 1845: Kelley X, p. 121. See also 15 April 1845: Kelley X, p. 166, on the value of travel: ‘you get, too, a little . . perhaps a considerable, good in finding the world’s accepted moulds every where, into which you may run and fix your own fused metal, – but not a grain Troy-weight do you get of new gold, silver or brass. After this you go boldly on your own resources, and are justified to yourself, that’s all.’ Notes 221

3. Letter to EBB, 14 June 1845: Kelley X, p. 265. 4. Woolford and Karlin, pp. 1–37. John Woolford quotes the letter to EBB, 25 July 1845: Kelley XI, p. 3. 5. Letter to EBB, 13 January 1845: Kelley X, p. 22. 6. Few early Browning manuscripts survived being used as a printer’s copy. Manuscripts were commonly thrown away after the proof sheets were printed. Older Browning retrieved and kept his manuscripts from Dramatis Personae to Asolando (1864–89). 7. Letter to Julia Wedgwood, 1 February 1868: in R. Curle (ed.), Robert Browning and Julia Wedgwood: a Broken Friendship as Revealed in their Letters (London, 1937) p. 175. 8. 28 August 1846: Kelley XIII, p. 308. 9. See also RB to Domett, 11 July 1842: Kelley VI, pp. 32–3: ‘I send with this Tennyson’s new vol [the first volume of Tennyson’s Poems of 1842] – &, alas, the old with it . . that is, what he calls old . . you will see, and groan! The alterations are insane. WhatEVER is touched is spoiled ... But how good when good he is – that noble Locksley Hall, for instance, & the St. Simeon Stylites – which I think perfect – . . . To think that he had omitted the musical “Forget-me-not” song, & “the Hesperides” – & the Deserted House – & “every thing that is his” – as distinguished from what is every- bodys!’ 10. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776) (Oxford, 1976) p. 44. See also Mill, Principles of Political Economy (1848) and Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859). 11. Saunders & Otley set up in 1826. Their popular authors in the 1830s were Bulwer-Lytton, Anna Jameson, Harriet Martineau (who gave Browning his copy of Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus in 1837) and Captain Marryat. See Elizabeth Sanders Arbuckle, ‘Saunders and Otley’, DLB, 106, pp. 271–4. 12. [May 1842]: Kelley V, p. 328. James Montgomery’s ‘The Wanderer of Switzerland’ (1806) was successful; he was also known as author of the reli- gious epic The World Before the Flood (1813). Saunders & Otley brought out his last, poorly received volume, The Pelican Island, in 1827. 13. October 1835: Kelley III, p. 352. 14. The Economy of Literary Form: English Literature and the Industrialization of Publishing 1800–1850 (London, 1996) p. 28. 15. ‘The King’ becomes Pippa’s third song in Pippa Passes (1841) and ‘Porphyria’ and ‘Johannes Agricola’ reappear in Dramatic Lyrics (1842) as ‘Porphyria’s Lover’ and ‘Johannes Agricola in Meditation’. ‘Lines’ appears in ‘James Lee’s Wife’ (Dramatis Personae, 1864). 16. William S. Peterson, Browning’s Trumpeter: The Correspondence of Robert Browning and Frederick J. Furnivall 1872–1889 (Washington, 1979) p. 32. 17. J. C. Reid, Thomas Hood (London, 1963) p. 210. 18. Letter to Frederick Oldfield Ward, 22 May 1844: Kelley VII, p. 318. 19. The essay is reprinted as an appendix in Longman II, pp. 478–503. 20. Jacques Derrida, ‘No Apocalypse, Not Now’, Diacritics (Summer 1984) 26. 21. 6 September 1835: Kelley III, p. 352. 22. March 1836: Kelley III, p. 373. 23. Letter to Fox, 16 April 1835: Kelley III, p. 134. 24. Monclar and Browning’s other French friend Joseph Milsand were 222 Notes

exceptional for their interest in ; there was no French edition of Browning’s poems in his lifetime. Monclar’s note and Browning’s addenda are reprinted as an appendix in Kelley III, pp. 416–24. 25. Browning wrote to Elizabeth Barrett of Pauline: ‘When you speak of the “Bookseller” – I smile, in glorious security – having a whole bale of sheets at the house-top: he never knew my name even! – and I withdrew these after a very little time’ – 15 January 1846: Kelley XI, p. 317. He gave Mill’s annotated copy to Forster. 26. Herbert Tucker describes the complex temporality of the relation between Aprile and Paracelsus, Browning’s Beginnings the Act of Disclosure (Minneapolis, 1980), pp. 54–8. 27. Jean-Pierre Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Nacquet, Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece, trans. Janet Lloyd (New York, 1988) p. 43. 28. Rees & Longman (founded 1806) published plays performed at Covent Garden, Drury Lane and the Haymarket, printed from the prompt books. 29. The Examiner, 7 May 1837: Kelley III, p. 400. 30. Browning appealed to Milton’s example when Mill criticized the diction of Pauline. See also ‘’, Pacchiarotto and the Parleying ‘With Christopher Smart’. 31. 31 July 1844: Kelley IX, p. 69. 32. In Textual Strategies: Perspectives in Post-Structuralist Criticism, ed. Josue V. Harari (Ithaca, NY, 1979) p. 148. 33. Bloom and Munich, p. 2. 34. Jacques Derrida, ‘This is not an Oral Footnote’, in Annotation and Its Texts, ed. Stephen A. Barney (Oxford, 1991) p. 202. 35. George Ticknor Curtis, A Treatise on the Law of Copyright (London, 1847) p. 69n. 36. Susan Eilenberg, Strange Power of Speech: Wordsworth, Coleridge and Literary Possession (Oxford, 1992) p. 202. 37. 28 August 1846: Kelley XIII, p. 308. 38. Bells and Pomegranates did not sell well in England, but it helped Browning find an important new public in the US. Some volumes reached and Margaret Fuller, who admired them. An unauthorized edition of Chapman & Hall’s 1849 Poems was published in the US by Ticknor, Reed & Fields. To Browning’s delight, Ticknor offered him sixty pounds for the right to print Men and Women. 39. Moxon’s expertise in poetry let him remain upmarket. He popularized poetry through the introduction of cheaper one-volume collections. A journal, the Englishman’s Magazine, ran from April to October 1831 and published Tennyson, Arthur Hallam, , , Charles Cowden Clarke and Forster. In 1844 Moxon published a two-volume edition of Elizabeth Barrett’s Poems. Richard Hengist Horne, who wrote an important review praising Sordello and with whom Elizabeth Barrett collab- orated on the New Spirit of the Age (1842), also brought out two dramas with Moxon. See Hans Ostrum, ‘Moxon’, DLB, 106, pp. 213–17. 40. One of the Shelley volumes contained an uncut version of ‘’ and in 1841 Moxon was tried for ‘blasphemous libel’. Historically this kind of charge was used to silence anti-government protest and was the law used against John Lilburne. Moxon was eloquently defended by Talfourd, and Notes 223

found guilty but not punished. He printed Shelley without the offending passages after that, but the case marked a shift in the handling of blasphe- mous libel in the courts and by the late 1840s the charge no longer posed a real risk to authors and publishers. 41. Letter to Domett, 13 July 1842: Kelley VI, p. 32. 42. Letter to Domett, 31 July 1844: Kelley IX, p. 69, 1844. 43. Letter to Domett, 23 February 1845: Kelley X, p. 89. 44. In 1836 Chapman & Hall published Sketches by Boz; they worked with Dickens until 1844. Other literary authors with Chapman at this time included Arthur Hugh Clough, Sir Henry Taylor, Bulwer-Lytton and the popular poet Philip Bailey, author of Festus as well as Browning’s friend, Bryan Waller Proctor and William Allingham who later knew the poet well. 45. August 1849: Litzinger and Smalley, p. 136. 46. Browning wrote to James Fields of Ticknor & Fields to arrange for the simultaneous American publication of Men and Women and also offered him Strafford and a corrected version of Sordello, volunteering to destroy the remaining 250 copies. The plan to change nothing in Sordello save by ‘writing in the unwritten every-other-line’ never came to fruition. 47. Known as Poetical Works (Third Edition): because the original editions of the poems were first editions, Poems of 1849 was called the second, hence 1863 was the third and 1865 the fourth. 48. The Fourth Edition of the Works (1865) was designed to look like that of 1863, but Browning used the opportunity of a completely new setting, requiring a printer’s copy prepared and checked by him, to make hundreds of small changes. 49. There is a so-called ‘second edition’ of A Blot in the ‘Scutcheon but it is not an edition in the proper sense, merely a reissue for the Bells and Pomegranates series, rushed into print for the day of the play’s performance in 1843, on account of the unauthorized changes made to the acting script by Macready. A new typesetting was needed for the second edition of Dramatis Personae, which gave Browning the chance to make revisions. 50. Smith later recalled: ‘He trusted me absolutely. I was deeply touched when his son related that, on his death-bed, his father told him that if he was ever in any difficulty he was to go to me and act exactly on my advice; and that all matters of business in regard to his works were to be left absolutely in my hands.’ Leonard Huxley, The House of Smith, Elder (London, 1923) p. 156. 51. The 1868 typesetting was not preserved in stereotype, which would have guaranteed the possibility of reprints without the drawback of storing bulky set type that might be needed for other purposes. Thus Browning had another chance to revise. He did so over a period of about six months in 1870. 52. Linda K. Hughes and Michael Lund, The Victorian Serial (Charlottesville, VA, 1996) p. 90. Their discussion of The Ring and the Book as a serial points out the similarities of effect between a trial and a serial publication (pp. 91–3, 97). 53. 12 December 1868: Litzinger and Smalley, p. 288. 54. Arnold to Mary Penrose Arnold, 5 June 1869: Arnold, Letters III, p. 347. 55. The Temple Bar (June 1876): Litzinger and Smalley, pp. 341–2, 347. 224 Notes

56. Letter to Eliza Fitzgerald, 6 September 1881: Learned Lady: Letters from Robert Browning to Mrs. Thomas Fitzgerald, ed. Edward C. McAleer (Cambridge, MA, 1966) p. 125. 57. Letter to Mr Yates, c. 1882: Letters of Robert Browning Collected by Thomas J. Wise, ed. Thurman L. Hood (London, 1933) p. 212. 58. Letter to George Smith, 12 November 1887: William S. Peterson, Browning’s Trumpeter: the Correspondence of Robert Browning and Frederick J. Furnivall, 1872–1889 (Washington, 1979) p. 198n. 59. Letter to George Smith, 27 February 1888: Philip Kelley and William S. Peterson, ‘Browning’s Final Revisions’, Browning Institute Studies, 1 (1973) p. 92. 60. Letter to EBB, 29 March 1846: Kelley XII, p. 187. Index

‘Abt Vogler’, see under Dramatis Poems of 1853 (1853), 165–6; Personae Merope (1858), 152, 161; ‘On Aeschylus, 144, 165, see also Translating Homer’ (1862), Agamemnon of Aeschylus 159–61, 165, 171, 220n.18; Agamemnon of Aeschylus, The (B’s ‘Dover Beach’ (1867), 165; translation, 1877), 8, 59–60, 95, Culture and Anarchy (1869), 107, 147, 159 166; ‘On the Modern Element Preface, 8, 60, 159, 160, 162–3, 169 in Literature’ (1869), 163–4 Alkestis, see Balaustion’s Adventure Arnould, Joseph, xi, 20, 21 Allingham, William, 89, 106, 161, ‘Artemis Prologuizes’, see under 203, 223n.44 Dramatic Lyrics ‘’, see under Men and Asolando (1889), 52 Women ‘Bad Dreams IV’, 2, 92 angels, 44, 106, 107, 155–7, 204, ‘Development’, 91, 220n.20 219n.10 ‘Inapprehensiveness’, 109, 142–5 anonymity, 19, 20, 22–3, 25, 26, 124, ‘Now’, 84–6 134, 138, 141 Asolo, 53, 127, 140–2, 143 apocalypse, 17, 74, 133, 142–5, Athenaeum, The, reviews of B, 15, 25, 188–9, 191–2, 198, 204, 205 41, 100 archives, 8, 185, 198, 221n.6, Atlas, The, review of B, 15, 24, 25 222n.25 Austin, Alfred, 1, 205–6 Aristophanes’ Apology (including B’s authorship, 8, 22–4, 26, 40–4, 49–51, translation of Euripides’ Heracles, 55–9, 134, 136, 158, 178–208 1875), 59–60, 147, 148, 215n.14 ‘Thamuris Marching’, 111, 148–9 ‘Bad Dreams IV’, see under Asolando Aristotle, Poetics, 65, 71, 175 Balaustion’s Adventure (including B’s Arnold, Matthew, 1, 6, 8, 20–1, translation of Euripides’ Alcestis, 146–77, 219n.10 1871), 59–60, 147, 148, 215n.14 admiration of B, 158, 160–1 Barrett, Elizabeth (EBB), xi–xiv, 7, 8, criticism of B, 158, 164, 196 15, 48, 58–9, 77, 127, 137, 155, criticism of Keats, 164 see also lyric love on modernity, 146, 151–2, 159, appearance, 114 163, 166, 176 admiration of B, 42, 43 on religion, 160 on B personally: xiii on tragedy, 151–2 on Carlyle, 91–4 on translation, 157–6 see also correspondence: with B, 11, 15–16, Arnold, Matthew, works: ‘On 42, 50, 54–5, 58, 75, 76, 77–9, Translating Homer’ 86, 87, 92–3, 94–5, 96–7, works: ‘Cromwell’ (1843), 20; The 103–4, 113–14, 139, 158, Strayed Reveller and other Poems 178–80, 197, 208, 212n.5, (1849), 20; ‘The Buried Life’ 216n.10, 220n.2, 222n.25; (1852), 168; ‘Empedocles on with Ruskin, see under Ruskin Etna’ (1852), 150–2; Preface to criticism of B, 42, 43, 76, 212n.4

225 226 Index

politics, 154, 219n.15 on biography, 6, 7, 15–16, 19, 22, on poetry, 91, 92 80, 86, 94–5, 105, 144, 168, on Ruskin, 127 184–6, 188, 195, 207–8, 216n.9 on Victorian theatre: 54–5 chronology, 209–11 works: Prometheus Bound, and on commercial aspects of miscellaneous poems (1833), 21; authorship, 179–81 The Seraphim, and Other Poems composition-methods, 179 (1848), 21, 181; essay on correspondence: see under EBB, Carlyle (with R. H. Horne) in A Carlyle, Domett, Fox, Haworth, New Spirit of the Age (1844), Macready, Monclar, Milsand, 91–2, 101–2; Poems (1844), Ruskin 222n.39; ‘The Runaway Slave critical reception, 17–19, 24, 40–2, at Pilgrim’s Point’ (1848), 154, 115, 127, 169, 213n.12, 219n.15; Aurora Leigh (1856), 221–2n.24, 222n.38, see also xi, 6, 97, 202, 217n.22, under individual periodicals 219n.15; Poems Before Congress difficulty, 4–6, 36, 40–51, 61–2, 66, (1860), 154, 219n.15 69–70, 80, 127–8, 188, 206–7 Barretts of Wimpole Street, The, xii–iii essays: on debt (c.1830), 20; see Baynes, Dorothy xiii also ‘Essay on Chatterton’, Bells and Pomegranates (series, 1841–6), ‘Essay on Shelley’ 6–7, 21, 52, 57, 96, 182, 200, see on magic, 30, 33, 100–1, 133, 168, also A Blot on the ’Scutcheon, 169, 187, 190, 220n.25 Colombe’s Birthday, Dramatic on modernity, 138 Lyrics, Dramatic Romances and on music, 37, 87, 149–50, 155, Lyrics, King Victor and King Charles, 162–3, 190 Luria and A Soul’s Tragedy, Pippa non-academic status, 20, 57, Passes, The Return of the Druses 166–7, 220n.22 Besier, Rudolf, xii–iv on periodicals, 182 Bible, 138 poetic and dramatic works, see titles Genesis, 146–7, 149, 157 of individual poems and volumes Job, 125 on poetic language, 37, 127, 165, Gospel of St. John, 204 172, see also main entry poetic Revelation, 189, 205 language ‘Bishop Blougram’s Apology’, see politics, 50, 60–1, 87, 97, 127, under Men and Women 154–6, 186–7, 212n.12, ‘Bishop Orders His Tomb at St. 216n.12 Praxed’s Church, The’, see under reading, 12, 15, 57, 138 Dramatic Romances and Lyrics religion, 11, 20, 106, 115–16, 129, Blanchot, Maurice, 147–8, 168–9 130, 133–4, 136–42, 153–4, Bloom, Harold, 16, 58, 117, 140, 144, 170, 179, 194–5, 213n.2 152, 170, 196, 213n.12, 215n.10, self-censorship, 11–12, 219n.4 social behaviour, 1–2, 55–7, 177 Blot on the ’Scutcheon, A (1843), 59, on Tennyson, 179–80 73 on translation, 157–67 Boehme, Jacob, 100, 104 translations, see Balaustion’s Browning, Anna Weidemann, 20 Adventure, Aristophanes’ Browning, Robert Apology, Agamemnon of on EBB, 179, see also lyric love, Aeschylus radiance vegetarian phase, 96 Index 227

wish to influence readers, 8, 23–4, Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 23, 164, 30, 40, 53–4, 69, 71, 188, 199 195–6, 203–5, 218n.7 ‘Reason’ (1830), 160 on the work of writing, 57–8, 89, Colombe’s Birthday (1844), 59 178–9, 208 copyright, 196–9 Browning, Robert, Senior, 20, 21, 186 Curtis, George, 197 Browning, Robert Weidemann (‘Pen’), xi, xiii, Dante, 101, 107–8, 205 Browning, Sarianna, 20, 179 Vita Nuova (1290–4), 107–8 Browning Society, 1, 207 Divina Commedia (c.1307–21), 89, Byron, George Gordon, 23, 27, 52, 107–8 114, 137 de Man, Paul, 83 Derrida, Jacques, 5, 124, 185, 196 canon, 1–2, 6, 19, 67, 117–8, 125 see ‘Development’ see under Asolando also influence, monuments Dickens, Charles, 80, 182, 197, Carlyle, Jane Welsh, 94, 95 223n.44 Carlyle, Thomas, 6, 7, 62, 183, 197, Domett, Alfred, x, 20, 21, 86 202 correspondence with B, 46–7, 52, admiration of B, 80, 88, 96–7, 99, 57–8, 58–9, 66, 87, 96, 194, 105 200–1, 221n.9 correspondence with B, 88, 94, Don Quixote, 68, 96 97–9, 105 Dowson, Christopher, 20, 21 criticism of B, 80, 106–7, 161, 196 Doyle, Francis, 167, 220n.22 on music, 93–5 drama, 7, 33–4, 47, 52–79, 119, 172, on poetry, 87–8, 93–100, 217n.34 188 politics, 87, 92–3 Dramatic Idyls (1879, 1880), 52 on religion, 92, 107 ‘dramatic lyric’, 52, 64, 86, 112, see works: Sartor Resartus (1833), 80, also lyric love 93, 101, 111, 217n.18; The Dramatic Lyrics (1842), 59 French Revolution (1837), 74, Advertisement, 203 80, 99, 101; On Heroes and Artemis Prologuizes’, 59, 160–1 Hero-Worship (1840), 87; Past ‘Cavalier Tunes’, 87, 216n.12 and Present (1843), 89, 91, 93, ‘Johannes Agricola in Meditation’, 104; Oliver Cromwell’s Letters 60 and Speeches (1845), 87, ‘On ‘’, 112, 117, 118 the Nigger Question’ (1849), ‘Porphyria’s Lover’, 60, 196 87; History of Frederick the Great ‘dramatic romance’, 52, 86 (1858–65), 87 Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1845), censorship, 11, 61, 222–3n.40 59 ‘Cavalier Tunes’, see under Dramatic ‘The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St. Lyrics Praxed’s’, 3, 8, 118, 120–6, 182 Chapman & Hall, 59, 186, 223n.44 ‘The Flight of the Duchess’, 183, Chatterton, Thomas, 8, 105, 191, see 184 also ‘Essay on Chatterton’ ‘Home Thoughts from Abroad’, 2 ‘Childe Roland to the Dark Tower ‘’, 55, 73–7, 182 Came’, see under Men and Women ‘The Lost Leader’, 60 Christmas Eve and Easter-Day, 59 ‘Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis’, 17 Church of England Quarterly, review of ‘Song’, 174 B, 42 ‘Time’s Revenges’, 82 228 Index dramatic sympathy, 30, 52–3, 70–3, Haworth, Euphrasia Fanny, 216n.12 correspondence with B, 21, 40, 50, Dramatis Personae (1864), 1, 52, 203 88, 181 ‘Abt Vogler’, 149–50 Hazlitt, William, 52 ‘Eurydice to Orpheus’, 130 Herakles, see Aristophanes’ Apology Herbert, George, ‘Virtue’ (1633), 75 Eclectic Review, review of B, 202 Hickey, Emily, 60 Eilenberg, Susan, 197, 198 Homer, 159–60 Eliot, George (Mary Ann Evans), The The Iliad, 149 Lifted Veil (1859), 189 The Odyssey, 159 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 95, 101, see also Arnold, Matthew, works: 217n.34 ‘On Translating Homer’ ‘Essay on Chatterton’, (1842), 16, Hood’s Magazine, venue for B’s work, 183–6, 195 19, 73, 182 ‘Essay on Shelley’ (1852), 6, 7, 59, 77, Hood, Thomas, 73, 182 80, 89, 94, 97–100, 114–16, 153, Horace, 3, 212n.5 217n.29 Horne, Richard Hengist, 42, 80, Euripides, see Aristophanes’ Apology, 222n.39 Balaustion’s Adventure correspondence with B, 12 ‘Eurydice to Orpheus’, see under correspondence with EBB, 212n.4 Dramatis Personae ‘House’ see under Pacchiarotto Examiner, review of B, 186 ‘How it Strikes a Contemporary’, see under Men and Women family romance, xi, 18, 21, Hughes, Linda K., 203, 223n.52 Fields James T., 223n.46 humanity, 81, 90–2, 96–100 correspondence with B, 40, 43, Hunt, Leigh, 186, 197 ‘Flight of the Duchess, The’, see under Dramatic Romances and Lyrics ‘Inapprehensiveness’, see under Flower, Eliza, 12, 21 Asolando Flower, Sarah, 11–12, 21 Incondita (1826), 11–12, 21 Foreign Quarterly Review, venue for B’s influence, xiii, 12, 15, 19, 23–4, 29, work, 183 35, 62–3, 65, 74–7, 105, 110–11, Forster, John, 11, 61, 69, 70, 80, 183, 114, 117–26, 132–6, 161, 170, 186, 194, 201, 222n.39 199 Forster, Margaret, xii, 212n.1, 12 Inn-Album, The (1875), 107, 218n.15 Foucault, Michel, 195 irony, 24, 44, 57, 82, 66, 93, 94, Fox, William Johnson, 1, 11, 19–24, 107–11, 115, 127, 169 33, 38, 182 correspondence with B, 21, 24, 26, James, Henry, 186 admiration of B, 2, 9, 56, 177 Franklin, Sydney, xii, xiv ‘Browning in Westminster Abbey’ Fraser’s Magazine, reviews of B, 15, (1891), 1–2, 6, 9, 55 25, 26 ‘The Private Life’ (1893), 2, 55–7 Furnivall, Frederick, 207 ‘The Novel in the Ring and the Book’ (1912), 55, 176–7 ghosts, 2, 13, 17, 37, 42, 44–5, 47–51, Jameson, Anna, 96, 221n.11 55–7, 63, 78, 81–2, 92, 97, 101–6, ‘Johannes Agricola in Meditation’, see 112–14, 117, 143, 148, 161, 170, under Dramatic Lyrics 190–2 Judgement-day, see apocalypse Index 229

Kafka, Franz, 168, 220n.23 Markus, Julia, xii Karlin, Daniel, 77–8, 204 Marlowe, Christopher, Dr Faustus Kean, Charles, 4, 59 (1603), 48, 174 Kean, Edmund, 52–3 Marston, Westland, 71 Keats, John, 23, 52, 114, 131, 137, Martineau, Harriet, 21, 197, 221n.11 220n.16 Maxwell, Catherine, 1, 219n.11 ‘On First Looking into Chapman’s Maynard, John, 15 Homer’ (1816), 164–5 ‘Memorabilia’, see under Men and Endymion (1818), 18, 42 Women Hyperion (1819), 16, 60 Men and Women (1855), 6, 7, 26, 52, The Fall of Hyperion (1819), 121–2 119, 223n.46 Lamia . . . and other poems (1820), 18 ‘Andrea del Sarto’, 137 ‘Ode to Autumn’ (1820), 126, 207 ‘Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Kenmare, Dallas, xii Came’, 2, 4, 6, 93, 114, 118, King Victor and King Charles (1842), 144 54, 59, 66 ‘Cleon’, 152–7 ‘Evelyn Hope’, 117 ‘Laboratory, The’, see under Dramatic ‘How it Strikes a Contemporary’, Romances and Lyrics 17, 89, 105–7 Lacan, Jacques, 109 ‘Love Among the Ruins’, 117 Landor, Walter Savage, 80, 182, 183, ‘Memorabilia’, 90, 112, 114 186 ‘My Star’, 89 laughter, 67–8, 96, 111, 148, 149–50, ‘Popularity’, 3, 8, 17, 113, 126–36 170, compare tragedy ‘The Patriot’, 2 Lee, Vernon (Violet Paget), 145 ‘A Toccata of Galuppi’s’, 126 Leighton, Frederick, 127 ‘“Transcendentalism”’, 100–5, 106, Lilburne, John, 8, 63–4, 194–5, 107, 111 222n.40 ‘Two in the Campagna’, 68–9, literary fame, 6, 14–16, 19, 29, 35–6, 83–5, 109 40, 80, 114–15, 180, 184–6 Metropolitan Magazine, review of B, 181 Literary Gazette, review of B, 15, 24 Mill, John Stuart, 6, 15, 16, 18–19, London Journal, review of B, 186 22, 27–36, 39, 52 Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green admiration of B, 25, 196, 214n.23 and Longman, 193 criticism of B, 196, 222n.30 ‘Lost Leader, The’, see under Dramatic works: ‘What is Poetry?’ (1833), 33; Romances and Lyrics ‘Two Kinds of Poetry’ (1833), ‘Love Among the Ruins’, see under 33; review of Tennyson’s Poems, Men and Women Chiefly Lyrical (1835), 28; essay Lund, Michael, 203, 223n.52 on Coleridge (1840), 35; Luria and A Soul’s Tragedy (1846), 59 Autobiography (1873), 27–8 ‘lyric love’, 8, 86, 88, 144, 155, 169–70 Miller, Betty, 42 Miller, J. Hillis, 4, 219n.1 Macready, William, 6, 7, 11, 52, 53, Milnes, Richard Monckton, 20, 80 54, 58–61, 66–73, 193 Milton, John, 8, 18, 199, 222n.30 admiration of B, 60, 67, 69–70 ‘Epitaph on Shakespeare’ (1632), correspondence with B, 54, 67–8, 2–3, 4, 121, 124, 128, 131–2, 70, 71–2, 214n.1 133, 191 criticism of B, 54, 59, 61–2, 70, 73, ‘Lycidas’ (1638), 126–7, 132–3 196 Areopagitica (1644), 194 230 Index

Paradise Lost (1667), 60, 129, 156 Preface, 40, 43, 53, 69, 70–1, 187–8 Milsand, Joseph, 45–6, 202, Parleyings with Certain People of 221–2n.24 Importance in Their Day (1887), 4 correspondence with B, 112 ‘With Bernard de Mandeville’, 7, Mitford, Mary Russell, xii, 197 104, 107 modernity, 2, 82–6, 216n.5, see also Patmore, Coventry, 127, 201 under Arnold, Matthew Pauline (1833), 1, 6, 12–39, 48, 55, Monclar, Amédée de Ripert, 186–7, 74, 75, 91, 155–6, 187, 208 221–2n.24 Preface, 15, 25, 27, 30, 31, 39, 121 correspondence with B, 11, 19, Note signed ‘PAULINE’, 14, 15, 212n.5, 214n.1 23–4, 26 Monthly Chronicle, The, review of B, 41 Pippa Passes (1841), 2, 53, 143–5 Monthly Repository, 11–12, 15, 33, Advertisement, 54 venue for B’s work: 19, 182 poetic language, 6, 16, 18, 23–4, reviews of B: 21 75–7, 105, 110, 113–14, 124–36, Montgomery, James, 181, 221n.12 145, 165, 184, 204, 206–7, monuments, xiii, 1–3, 5, 8, 81, 83, 216n.6, see also signature-effects 114, 117–18, 120–3, 125–7, 131, Poetical Works (1863), 1, 46, 202–3, 139, 145, 148, 154, 157, 173, 186, 223n.47, 48 190–1, 212n.5, 216n.5, 218n.13 politics, 7–8, 11, 44–5, 50–1, 60–6, Moulton-Barrett, Charles J., xii 81, 102–3 Moulton-Barrett, Edward, xii ‘Popularity’, see under Men and Moxon, Edward, 58, 179, 198, 200–2, Women 222n.39, 40 ‘Porphyria’s Lover’, see under ‘My Last Duchess’, see under Dramatic Dramatic Lyrics Lyrics Pound, Ezra, ‘My Star’, see under Men and Women ABC of Reading (1960), 81 Canto I (1917), 81 ‘Names, The’ (1884), 133–4, 143 Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Saviour Newman, Frederick William, 159 of Society (1871), 90, 107 New Monthly Magazine and Literary Prins, Yopie, 165–6, 220n.19 Journal, review of B, 186 Pritchard, James, 20 ‘Now’, see under Asolando Quarles, Francis, Emblems (1635), 138 ‘objective poet’, 68, 115–16, 122, quest-romance, 63–4, 67–8 compare ‘subjective poet’ Oedipus, 89–90 radiance, 1, 6, 14, 18, 36, 37, 38, 48, Old Yellow Book, The, 166–7, 170 51, 68, 69, 75, 86, 88–9, 100, Orpheus, 130 103–4, 109, 110, 111, 113–14, Orr, Alexandra, 73, 92, 127, 186 118, 124, 129–30, 137, 144, 150, 168, 170, 178–9, 187, 192 Pacchiarotto and How He Worked in Rand, Richard, 120 Distemper (1876), 4, 5, 8, 9, 17, reading, 4, 27, 30–1, 34–6, 44, 52, 206–7 108–11, 112–13, 115, 128, 145, ‘Epilogue’, 5, 206–7 165, 168–9, 171, 185, 187, 189, ‘House’, 27, 92 191, 196, 203–4, 206–7 ‘St. Martin’s Summer’, 87, 92 and love, xi, 6, 12, 13–14, 46–7, 51, Paracelsus (1835), 8, 19, 21, 26, 69, 86 86, 186–92, 212n.5 Red Cotton Night-Cap Country, 99 Index 231

Rees & Longman, 222n.28 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 5–6, 12, 18, 23, Return of the Druses, The (1843), 54, 28, 29, 30, 36, 50–1, 96, 102, 59, 65–6, 71 105, 112–14, 124, 148, 150, 155, Revue Contemporaine, review of B, 45 175, 195, 219n.10 Reynolds, Margaret, xi ‘Queen Mab’ (1813), 222n.40 Ring and the Book, The (1868–9), 8, Alastor (1816), 15, 16, 60, 85, 117 17, 25, 52, 92, 99, 100, 124, 127, ‘Mont Blanc’ (1817), 16 147, 155, 164, 166, 167–77, Prometheus Unbound (1820), 42 223n.52 and Sordello, 170, 172, ‘To a Skylark’ (1820), 48 173–6, 203–5 ‘Ode to the West Wind’ (1820), 90, Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 39, 123, 127 144 Rossetti, William, 202 ‘Adonais’ (1821), 117–18, 131–2 Ruskin, John, 112–45 ‘Charles I’ (1824), 60 admiration of B’s work, 118, 120, Julian and Maddalo (1824), 42, 140 127–32, 134–6 ‘Sonnet: Lift not the painted veil’ admiration of EBB’s work, 127 (1824), 189 correspondence: with EBB, The Triumph of Life (1824), 37, 124 218–19n.15; with RB, 4, 8, 26, Epipsychidion (1839), 15, 75–6 43, 53, 91, 106, 116, 127–32, ‘Sonnet: England in 1819’ (1839), 134–6, 138, 142, 216n.6 63 criticism of B’s work, 127, 127–32, ‘A Defence of Poetry’ (1840), 77 134–6, 196 ‘On a Future State’, 153 (1840) on modernity, 125, 138 see also ‘Essay on Shelley’ politics, 127 ‘Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis’, see religion, 130, 137–8 under Dramatic Romances and works: The Poetry of Architecture Lyrics (1837–8), 121; Stones of Venice Sidney, Philip, 144, 214n.11 (1851–3), 118, 120, 122, 125, Apology for Poetry (1595), 46, 151 131; Modern Painters III (1856), signature-effects, 5, 39, 126, 135, 112, 114–16, 123, 136; Modern 142, 185 Painters IV (1856), 120–3, 125; bee, 27, 30, 95, 124, 133, 134–5, The Political Economy of Art 139, 142 (1859); Modern Painters V bells, 118, 124, 134, 140, 159, see (1860), 3, 5, 7–8, 117, 124; Fors also Bells and Pomegranates Clavigera VII (1877), 137 ‘Elys’, 50, 74–5, 127, 141, 142, ‘St. Martin’s Summer’, see under 173–5 Pacchiarotto enclosure, 37–8 Saunders & Otley, 24, 181, 221n.11 mimosa, 103–4 Schad, John, 219n.10 murex (blue), 113, 128, 131–6 Scott, Walter, 114, 138 ooze, 126–7, 173–5, 207 The Talisman (1832), 123–4 talisman, 124 Shakespeare, William, 2–3, 27, 101, women’s hair, 126, 174 115, 120, 128, 133–4, 191 see also monuments, towers, etc. Richard III (1597), 34, 53 Silverthorne, Alicia, 24, 38 The Merchant of Venice (1600), 26 Silverthorne, James, 12 Hamlet (1603), 38 Smith, Adam, The Wealth of Nations Sonnet 53 (1609), 78 (1776), 180 Othello (1622), 53, 68, 70, 100 Smith, Elder, 201, 207 Macbeth (1623), 67 Smith, George, 201, 207, 223n.50 232 Index

‘Song’, see under Bells and things, 162, 169, 170–1, 172–3, 184 Pomegranates ‘Time’s Revenges’, see under Dramatic Sordello (1840), 6–7, 9, 15, 16, 25, 26, Romances and Lyrics 28, 39, 40–51, 55, 60, 68, 70, ‘Toccata of Galuppi’s, A’, see under 74–5, 81, 87, 88, 96, 106, 111, Men and Women 114, 116, 126–7, 138–42, 143–4, towers, 64, 124, 140–5, 146 152–3, 156, 200, 223n.46 157, 173, 218n.14, see also Dedication, 202 monuments and ‘Popularity’, 132–3 tragedy, 53, 67, 71, 72, 73, 78, 148–9, and The Ring and the Book, 8, 127, 151–2, 172, 175, 193, 195, 203–5 compare laughter and ‘“Transcendentalism”’, 100–5 transcendentalism, 92, 217n.34 Spectator, The, reviews of B, 41, 205 ‘“Transcendentalism”’, see under Men Spenser, Edmund, The Faerie Queene, and Women 67–8, 72 ‘Two in the Campagna’, see under Stone, Marjorie, xi Men and Women Strafford (play, 1837), 54, 55, 59–66, Trifler, The, venue for B’s work, 20 193–4, Tucker, Herbert, 63, 66, 84, 148, Preface, 70–1, 193–4 213n.12, 216n.4, 222n.26 ‘subjective poet’, 6, 113, 115–16, Turner, Joseph Mallord William, 114, compare ‘objective poet’ 121, 127, 136 sublime, 110, 111, 131–2, 141, 157, 198 Vernant, Jean-Pierre, 193 Swinburne, Algernon Charles, admiration of B, 4, 30 Ward, Frederick, 73 on The Ring and the Book, 175 Westminster Review, The, 21 symbols, 109, 110, 162, 168–9, 186, Wilde, Oscar, 24–5 187, 188, 195, 197, 204–5 Wilde, Richard, 183, 185 Wilson, Effingham, 186 Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine, review of Woolf, Virginia, xii B, 15, 19 Woolford, John, 1, 179 Talfourd, Thomas Noon, 11, 80, Wordsworth, Ann, 73, 102 222n.40 Wordsworth, William, 8, 18, 23, 27–8, and copyright, 197–9 47, 60, 80, 137, 186, 197, 216n.6 Ion (1835), 67, 69 ‘Tintern Abbey’ (1798), 36–7 Tasso, 183 The Prelude (1799) 39, 117, 119 Temple Bar, article on B, 205 ‘A Poet’s Epitaph’ (1800), 191, temporality, 32–6, 49, 64, 80–111, 214n.13 127, 185, 190, 192, 207, 216n.4, Note to ‘The Thorn’ (1800), 121, 222n.26 162 Tennyson, Alfred, 20–1, 24, 25, 106, The Prelude (1805), 198 114, 127, 137, 200, 222n.39 ‘Daffodils’ (1807), 38 on B’s poetry, 76 ‘“Intimations” Ode’ (1807), 100, works: ‘Timbuctoo’ (1827), 20; 102, 104, 117 Poems, By Two Brothers (1827), ‘Resolution and Independence’ 21; Poems, Chiefly Lyrical (1833), (1807), 191 24, 28; Poems (1842), 221n.9 ‘Thamuris Marching’, see under Aristophanes’ Apology