Robert Browning

As Robert Browning was not covered in "The Year's Work" for 2005, the present article reviews a selection of publications from the past two years. The three major items are the latest volumes of TheBrownings' Correspondence and of the Oxford University Press Poetical Works of Robert Browning, and John Haydn Baker's monograph Browning and Wordsworth. Some of the articles in this review period share Baker's focus on Browning's attitude toward the Romantics, though the dominant theme here is the poet's creative response to various aspects of the Victorian cultural context, especially religion, but also a number of other cultural practices, such as art criticism, archaeology, and photography.

Volume 15 of The Brownings' Correspondence, edited by Philip Kelley, Scott Lewis, and Edward Hagan (Winfield: Wedgestone Press, 2006) is as ever carefully presented and copiously annotated, especially Elizabeth's letters to her sister Arabella, previously published separately by Lewis. The present volume covers the period between January 1848 and August 1849, an exceptionally unproductive period for Robert from an artistic point of view, but an eventful time both politically and in the Brownings' private life. Letters, mostly by Elizabeth, detail the excitement and worries surrounding her pregnancy and Pen's first six months, while also conveying a sense of Robert's deep sadness on the death of his mother only nine days after Pen's birth. Few are the letters which do not bear witness to the couple's intense interest in Italian and French politics. While other British residents flee Florence to avoid the tumult of the short-lived republic and the subsequent Austrian occupation, the poets with their republican sympathies stay behind to watch with dismay as the Florentines' initial enthusiasm for the republic is replaced by renewed allegiance to the returning Grand Duke, a fickleness which EBB repeatedly blames on the Italian national temperament.

Both Brownings are realistic in their evaluation of the French Second Republic, but there are also some disagreements between them, such as the first indications of a key difference on politics, as Elizabeth begins to succumb to the charisma of Louis Napoleon, while Robert remains more critical of the man he will later caricature in Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau. For instance, on April 22, 1848, Elizabeth writes to her sister Henrietta, alluding to the recent bloodshed in France: "Robert and I think just alike on most points—but if one of us two goes further than the other, I conscientiously believe it is I —Dont say that I say so, though! Sometimes, in joke, I call him an aristocrat." By contrast, on August 31, 1849, she declares:

It seems to me that [Louis Napoleon] has given proof, as far as the evidence goes, of prudence, integrity, & conscientious patriotism—the situation is difficult & he fills it honorably. The Rome business [i.e. the French occupation of Rome] has been miserably managed—this is the great blot on the character of his government. But I, for my own part, (my husband is not so minded) do consider that the French motive has been good, the intention pure.

For the student of Robert's poetry, the main value of these letters lies in the insight which such passages give into his political opinions as they will be reflected in later works. Most of the material in this volume has been published previously, but the chronological presentation here of all known letters, with notes explaining references to specific events, makes it much easier to trace the development of Browning's views. The appendix of contemporary reviews contains not only reviews of the 1849 Poems but also notices of the 1848 revival of A Blot in the 'Scutcheon which are otherwise difficult to access.

The Ring and the Book, Books IX-XII, Volume 9 of The Poetical Works of Robert Browning (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004), completes Stefan Hawlin and T.A.J. Burnett's edition of Browning's magnum opus. Like the previous two volumes of this edition, Books IX-XII are meticulously presented and annotated, going beyond the less detailed notes in previous critical editions. Especially helpful are the notes which elucidate over fifty allusions to classical authors...