Robert Browning

If there is a theme that predominates in publications this year, it is the philosophical content and contexts for Robert Browning’s poetry, as well as the complexity of his language and his narrative strategies. Articles and book chapters include Ashton Nichols on ecocritical approaches to Browning, Stephen Cheeke on the relationship between “Fra Lippo Lippi” (1855) and Ruskin’s aesthetic theory, Julia Saville on political thought and concepts of soul. Laura Clarke on Romantic conceptions of music as a philosophical framework, and Philipp Erchinger on Browning and the empiricism of William James and John Dewey. Catherine Addison writes on prosody and poetic structure in The Ring and the Book (1868/69); Jean-Charles Perquin on Browning, metalipsis, and forms of boundary crossing; and Ashby Bland Crowder considers Browning’s irony in “Up at a Villa—Down in the City” (1855). In addition, Britta Martens presents a fine study of critical work on Browning in a new volume in the Palgrave Reader’s Guide to Essential Criticism series.

This year’s review also includes volumes 24 and 25 of The Brownings’ Correspondence. These volumes cover the years 1857 and 1858 and paint a striking picture of the Brownings’ travels within Italy and in France. In “A Romantic Notion: One Scholar’s Lifetime of Devotion to the Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning,” Nicolas Basbanes profiles the research and editorial work of Philip Kelley, who has devoted his career to the task of editing the Brownings’ correspondence (Humanities 36 [2015]: 24–27, 42–43). Basbanes outlines the scope of this scholarly endeavor, which began for Kelley when he studied at Baylor University in the 1950s, at a time when only approximately three thousand Browning and Barrett letters were known to exist (by 1962, there were six thousand [p. 27]). Through years of painstaking work, Kelley was able to uncover and document previously unknown archival material, such as the “Diary of E.B.B,” discovered in 1961, in addition to other remarkable caches. Kelley personally transcribed Elizabeth Barrett’s correspondence with her sister Arabella in the early 1960s and was also responsible for campaigning in 1969 to save and restore the Browning’s home, Casa Guidi, in Florence. Other major finds have included the papers and correspondence of the French critic Joseph Milsand, which Kelley tracked down and discovered in an attic in the Milsand family home in Dijon. This material, which was still in boxes from Milsand’s time, totaled 4,138 letters, including those exchanged with Browning’s sister, Sarianna, as well as Browning. The editorial project represented by The Brownings’ Correspondence has been strongly supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), an important investment in material that continues to form an essential foundation for current and future Browning studies.

The Brownings’ Correspondence, vol. 24 (February 1857—December 1857), ed. Philip Kelley, Edward Hagan, and Linda M. Lewis (Winfield, Kan.: Wedgestone, 2016)

A series of tragic losses affecting Elizabeth Barrett Browning in particular marks the period covered in this volume. After the death of the Brownings’ friend and benefactor John Kenyon, in December 1856, a close Barrett family friend, Mary Trepsack, dies in March, followed by Barrett Browning’s father in April 1857. The death of Barrett’s father, who never accepted her marriage, ends any possibility of reconciliation. Through the correspondence during this year, one senses the impact on Barrett Browning’s health and mood, as well as Browning’s efforts to lift her spirits. Browning’s solicitude for Barrett is evident in his response to his father-in-law’s passing. “He has shed many tears, dearest Robert,” Barrett tells her sister Arabella (p. 60). Browning writes to Arabella, “Ba is far better than I could <have hoped for—She> will get over the blow,” reassuring her, “<I TAKE GOOD> care of Ba, be sure” (p. 61). He observes the ironic cruelty in this abrupt end to hopes of reconciliation between Barrett and her father: “it is all over now, all hope of better things, or a kind answer to entreaties such as I have seen Ba write in the bitterness of her heart. There must...