Volume VIII of the Poetical Works of Browning is the second of three volumes of Browning's masterpiece, The Ring and the Book. The commentary, at the bottom of each page, elucidates Browning's creative and sometimes challenging use of language with reference to his correspondence, his historical sources, and his own rich experience of Italy. Previously unidentified allusions are fully explained, and a newly discovered source from a seventeenth-century Italian chronicle is presented for the first time, allowing further insight into Browning's engagement with history.

• Textual Note to Books V-VIII


• References and Abbreviations


• The Ring And The Book, Books V-VIII


• Book V: Count Guido Franceschini


• Introduction to Book VI


• Book VI: Giuseppe Caponsacchi


• Introduction to Book VII


• Book VII: Pompilia


• Introduction to Book VIII


• Book VIII: Dominus Hyacinthus de Archangelis


• Appendices


• B: Caponsacchi's Ancestry


• C: The Torture of the Vigil


• D: Yale Variants


• E: Compositors

Stefan Hawlin is Lecturer in English, University of Buckingham
Tim Burnett is Manuscript Librarian at the British Library (retired)