The Poetical Works of Robert Browning (two volumes) 1896

Published by Smith, Elder. & Co, London, 1896, two volumes, full leather bindings, labels with gilt lettering to spines, gilding to fore edge & borders, marbled endpapers, each volume 14.5 cms x 19.3 cms x 4.3 cms, three word inscription with bookplate & date to blank page in each volume, overall condition: very good.

Robert Browning (1812 1889) was an English poet and playwright whose dramatic monologues put him high among the Victorian poets. He was noted for irony, characterization, dark humour, social commentary, historical settings and challenging vocabulary and syntax.

His early long poems Pauline (1833) and Paracelsus (1835) were acclaimed, but his reputation dwindled 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, he 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 (18681869) made him a leading poet.

Bythe time of his death in 1889, he was seen as a sage and philosopher-poet who had fed into Victorian social and political discourse. Societies for studying his work survive into the 21th century.

                                                                                                                           A HANDSOME SET