Poems of Robert Browning (1911)

S$72.00

Poems of Robert Browning (1911)

S$72.00

Title: Poems of Robert Browning, containing Dramatic Lyrics, Dramatic Romances, Men and Women, Dramas, Pauline, Paracelsus, Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day, Sordello, and Dramatis Personae

Author: Robert Browning

Publisher: Henry Frowde, Oxford University Press, 1911.

Condition: Full padded leather. Near fine. Gilt to all edges. Bookplate to ffep. Text clean, binding tight. 696pp., app 8″ by 5″.

SKU: browning-1911 Categories: , Tag:

About Robert Browning (from Wikipedia):

Robert Browning (7 May 1812 – 12 December 1889) was an English poet and playwright whose dramatic monologues put him among the foremost Victorian poets. His poems are noted for irony, characterization, dark humour, social commentary, historical settings and challenging vocabulary and syntax. His career began well, but shrank for a time. The long poems Pauline (1833) and Paracelsus (1835) were acclaimed, but in 1840 Sordello was seen as wilfully obscure. His renown took over a decade to return, by which time he had moved from Shelleyan forms to a more personal style. In 1846 Browning married the older poet Elizabeth Barrett and went to live in 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 (1868-1869) made him a leading British poet. He continued to write prolifically, but his reputation today rests mainly on his middle period. By 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 formed in his lifetime and survived in Britain and the United States into the 20th century.

From Paracelsus:

At times I almost dream
I too have spent a life the sages’ way,
And tread once more familiar paths. Perchance
I perished in an arrogant self-reliance
Ages ago; and in that act a prayer
For one more chance went up so earnest, so
Instinct with better light let in by death,
That life was blotted out — not so completely
But scattered wrecks enough of it remain,
Dim memories, as now, when once more seems
The goal in sight again.