Penguin Classics: Selected Poems Of Robert Browning

Henry James called Robert Browning (1812-89) ‘a tremendous and incomparable modern’, and the sheer immediacy and colloquial energy of his poetry ensure its enduring appeal. Browning paints landscapes both suburban and sublime, combines lyric and demotic language and introduces the everyday events of the streets and market place into the rarefied world of Victorian poetry. This selection includes examples from the early Dramatic Lyrics (1842) and Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1845), from the collections that count as Browning’s masterpieces, Men and Women (1855) and Dramatis Personae (1864), and from the fine, though less familiar, works of his later years. Together they reveal Browning as one of the most intense and constantly surprising poets.