Pauline: The Fragment of a Confession: “I was made and meant to look for you and wait for you and become yours forever”

By Robert Browning

Robert Browning is one of the most significant Victorian Poets and, of course, English Poetry.

Much of his reputation is based upon his mastery of the dramatic monologue although his talents encompassed verse plays and even a well-regarded essay on Shelley during a long and prolific career.

He was born on May 7th, 1812 in Walmouth, London. Much of his education was home based and Browning was an eclectic and studious student, learning several languages and much else across a myriad of subjects, interests and passions.

Browning's early career began promisingly. The fragment from his intended long poem Pauline brought him to the attention of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and was followed by Paracelsus, which was praised by both William Wordsworth and Charles Dickens. In 1840 the difficult Sordello, which was seen as willfully obscure, brought his career almost to a standstill.

Despite these artistic and professional difficulties his personal life was about to become immensely fulfilling. He began a relationship with, and then married, the older and better known Elizabeth Barrett. This new foundation served to energise his writings, his life and his career.

During their time in Italy they both wrote much of their best work. With her untimely death in 1861 he returned to London and thereafter began several further major projects.

The collection Dramatis Personae (1864) and the book-length epic poem The Ring and the Book (1868-69) were published and well received; his reputation as a venerated English poet now assured.

Robert Browning died in Venice on December 12th, 1889.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Portable Poetry
• Release date: Jan 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781787376540

Robert Browning

Robert Browning (1812-1889) was an English poet and playwright. Browning was born in London to an abolitionist family with extensive literary and musical interests. He developed a skill for poetry as a teenager, while also learning French, Greek, Latin, and Italian. Browning found early success with the publication of Pauline (1833) and Paracelsus (1835), but his career and notoriety lapsed over the next two decades, resurfacing with his collection Men and Women (1855) and reaching its height with the 1869 publication of his epic poem The Ring and the Book. Browning married the Romantic poet Elizabeth Barrett in 1846 and lived with her in Italy until her death in 1861. In his remaining years, with his reputation established and the best of his work behind him, Browning compiled and published his wife’s final poems, wrote a series of moderately acclaimed long poems, and traveled across Europe. Browning is remembered as a master of the dramatic monologue and a defining figure in Victorian English poetry.

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Pauline by Robert Browning

THE FRAGMENT OF A CONFESSION

Robert Browning is one of the most significant Victorian Poets and, of course, English Poetry.

Much of his reputation is based upon his mastery of the dramatic monologue although his talents encompassed verse plays and even a well-regarded essay on Shelley during a long and prolific career.

He was born on May 7th, 1812 in Walmouth, London.  Much of his education was home based and Browning was an eclectic and studious student, learning several languages and much else across a myriad of subjects, interests and passions.

Browning's early career began promisingly. The fragment from his intended long poem Pauline brought him to the attention of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and was followed by Paracelsus, which was praised by both William Wordsworth and Charles Dickens. In 1840 the difficult Sordello, which was seen as willfully obscure, brought his career almost to a standstill.

Despite these artistic and professional difficulties his personal life was about to become immensely fulfilling.  He began a relationship with, and then married, the older and better known Elizabeth Barrett. This new foundation served to energise his writings, his life and his career.

During their time in Italy they both wrote much of their best work. With her untimely death in 1861 he returned to London and thereafter began several further major projects.

The collection Dramatis Personae (1864) and the book-length epic poem The Ring and the Book (1868-69) were published and well received; his reputation as a venerated English poet now assured.

Robert Browning died in Venice on December 12th, 1889.

Index of Contents

NOTE ON PAULINE: THE FRAGMENT OF A CONFESSION

PAULINE

SONNET

ROBERT BROWNING – A SHORT STORY

ROBERT BROWNING – A CONCISE BIBLIOGRAPHY

NOTE ON PAULINE: THE FRAGMENT OF A CONFESSION

The history of the earliest printed of Browning's writings is so curious that it seems worth while to give it at greater length than its intrinsic merit would require. As a boy Browning wrote an inordinate amount of verse, imitative largely of Byron, and some of it written when he was twelve struck his father as good enough to deserve printing, but no publisher could be found ready to confirm this faith. Then Browning fell into a Shelleyan mood, and when he was twenty projected a great work of which the introduction only was written. This introduction was Pauline, which to be precise was completed October 22, 1832. Browning's aunt volunteered to pay the expenses of publication, and it was published anonymously early in 1833 by Saunders & Otley. The most authoritative person on literary matters in the young poet's circle of friends was the Rev. William Johnson Fox, a Unitarian clergyman and editor of the Monthly Repository. He had a few years before given emphatic commendation to the boy's verse, and now reviewed the poem with great warmth in his own magazine, so winning the poet's gratitude as to draw from him the extravagant expression: I shall never write a line without thinking of the source of my first praise, be assured. The poem missed what would have been from its writer a more notable review. Mr. John Stuart Mill, six years Browning's senior, was so delighted with Pauline that he wrote to the editor of Tait's Magazine, the only periodical in which he could write freely, asking leave to review the poem. The editor replied that he had just printed a curt, contemptuous notice, and could not at once take the other track. When Mill died his copy of Pauline, crowded with annotations, fell into Browning's hands and may now be seen in the South Kensington Museum.

In spite of such hopeful promise the poem was still-born from the press.