POEMS AND LYRICS BY: ROBERT BROWNING

Poet Robert Browning, like his wife, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, achieved fame close to notoriety in the Victorian era, due in part to his accomplished poetry, and in some measure to the romantic tale of his and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s marriage and life.

Robert Browning was born near London, England, in 1812 to Robert and Sarah Anna Browning.

Browning’s unusual family no doubt contributed to his art. His father, an intellectual whose library contained around 6000 volumes, was a banker who’d shunned his father’s slave-run plantations in the West Indies for life as an abolitionist in London. It was rumored that Browning’s Jamaican grandmother was a mulatto. Browning’s mother was a musician.

Browning was a precociously intelligent child who’d written his first book of poetry by the age of 12 was fluent in several languages by the age of 14. In addition to his language and literary abilities, he also composed music.

Browning dedicated himself to writing poetry as a young man, but his work was not well known when, in 1845, he sent a seminal letter to the poet Elizabeth Barrett, praising her poetry. He began a secret courtship with Barrett, who was an invalid and confined to her home, both by her illness and her strict father. In 1846 the two eloped and left for Italy.