This introduction to Browning includes biographical information, social and historical contexts, an overview of the range of his work, and a survey of the major critical debates surrounding him and his work.

Acknowledgments. Abbreviations and referencing. Introduction Part I - LIFE AND CONTEXTS a. The Early Years: 1812-1832 - Childhood; Adolescent Rehabilitation b. The Young Writer: 1832-1846 - First Works; The Theatre: a dead end?; First Journeys to Italy; Courtship; Elizabeth Barrett; c. The Italian Years: 1846-1861 - 'Italy...my University'; Italy, Creativity, and Love d. Widowerhood and Old Age: 1861-1889 - Recognition at Last; The 'Saturated, Sane' Public Man; Interpretations. Further Reading. Part II - WORK a. Early Long Poems - Pauline; Paracelsus; Sordello; Conclusions. Further Readings b. The Dramatic Monologue. Further Readings c. Dramatic lyrics and Dramatic Romances and Lyrics - My Last Duchess; Pictor Ignotus; Porphyria's Lover; Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister, The Bishop Orders his Tomb; Count Gismond; The Lost Leader. Further Reading d. Men and Women and Dramatis Personae - Poems about Art; Poems of Religion; Poems of Love. Further Reading e. The Ring and the Book - Basic Considerations; Characters and Moral Formations; Pompilia and Caponsacchi. Further Reading f. The Late Poetry - Red Cotton Night-Cap Country; Ivan Ivanovitch; The Parleying with Gerard de Lairesse; Beatrice Signorini. Further Reading Part III - CRITICSM a. In and Out of the Canon: 1889-1979 b. Responses to the Early Long Poems - Pauline; paracelsus; Sordello c. The Early Monologues: A Variety of Approaches - Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister: 'Indeterminacy of Interpretation'; Towards Feminist Readings of Porphyria's Lover and My Last Duchess; Artist in the Marketplace-A Marxist View of Pictor Ignotus; Rescuing Andromeda: Ironic and Heroic Readings of Count Gimond d. The Middle-Period Work - A Toccata of Galuppi's vs Historical Readings; Historical Readings of Fra Lippo Lippi; Childe Roland: Psychoanalytic vs Historical Readings; The Heretic's Tragedy and the Grotesque e. The Ring and the Book: a Novel Poem. Further Reading Chronology. Bibliography. Index

Stefan Hawlin is a lecturer in English at the University of Buckingham. He is one of the editors of the Oxford Poetical Works of Robert Browning and the new editor of Browning Society Notes