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.

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

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