Robert Browning – Victorian Poet

Bring me a better and a bigger acerbic than Robert Browning and I will accept I am at the losing side! However, I do believe that finding one such might be very difficult for the readers of this article and also for the scholars of literature. Robert Browning was not only an acerbic but also a poet who wrote what pleased him instead of writing something that might have pleased the readers of his poetry. He was eccentric since his very childhood and the symptoms also showed up in the classrooms.

Born in 1812, Robert Browning could not bear the pressure and setting of school life for long. He did not pay attention to the lectures but kept himself busy in painting and reading things not common for students at an early age. He left school at the age of 12 and began taking classes from private tutors at home. When he was 14, he was already a boy fluent in Latin, Greek, French and Italian along with native language English. According to the biographers of this unusually talented poet, Robert already wrote a volume of poems when he was only 12 but later could not find a publisher and burnt it.

A love for monologues and dramatic set-up mark the poetry of Robert Browning. His volumes of poetry are thicker than the oeuvre of most of the English poets. It tells us a great deal about this Victorian poet. Some of the very famous works by Robert Browning are:

Men and Women, published in 1855
The Ring and the Book, published in 1868
Dramatis Personae, published in 1864

Many other individual poems became very popular. However, the greatest achievement of this poet was that he contributed immensely to the social and political discourse of his times. He did not shy from imposing his personal views in his works of literature. He was also a great admirer of the Romantic poets and he liked Shelley and his works.

Robert was married to the popular Victorian poetess, Elizabeth Barret who later became Elizabeth Barret Browning. He died in 1889 and left behind him a lot for the readers to ponder, discuss and remember.

by a contributor to Featured Authors