The Poetical Works of Robert Browning.

BROWNING, Robert.

$400.00

Item Number: 138644

London: Smith, Elder. & Co, 1897.

Finely bound example of Browning’s collected poetical works. Octavo, two volumes bound into one in full polished calf, gilt titles and tooling to the spine in six compartments within raised gilt bands, morocco spine label lettered in gilt, gilt ruling to the front and rear panels, all edges gilt, marbled endpapers, tissue-guarded frontispiece portrait of Browning to each volume. In very good 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.