The Poems of Browning: Volume Four

1862 - 1871

John Woolford, Daniel Karlin, Joseph Phelan, John Woolford, Daniel Karlin, Joseph Phelan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317905110
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Littérature
• Subtopic: Critique littéraire

The Poems of Robert Browning is a multi-volume edition of the poetry of Robert Browning (1812 -1889) resulting from a completely fresh appraisal of the canon, text and context of his work. The poems are presented in the order of their composition and in the text in which they were first published, giving a unique insight into the origins and development of Browning's art. Annotations and headnotes, in keeping with the traditions of Longman Annotated English Poets, are full and informative and provide details of composition, publication, sources and contemporary reception.

Volumes one (1826-1840) and two (1841-1846) presented the poems from his Browning's early years, while volume three (1847-61) covered the period of his marriage to Elizabeth Barrett and residence in Italy. Volume four (1862-71) deals with the decade following Elizabeth's death and Browning's return to England. These years saw the appearance of some of his most significant work, and a steady rise in his critical reputation. In Dramatis Personae (1864), Browning uses his characteristic "dramatic" mode to expose predicaments of thought and feeling, in characters ranging from Shakespeare's Caliban to the cheating medium, "Mr Sludge"; other poems dramatize Browning's complicated feelings about the deceptions and self-deceptions of romantic love. Balaustion's Adventure (1871) is an engaging reworking of Euripides' Alcestis, whose theme, the resurrection of a beloved lost wife, has poignant personal resonance for Browning;while Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, published in the same year, offers a thinly-veiled account of the life and actions of Napoleon III, the recently deposed Emperor of France, over whom Browning and Elizabeth had quarrelled. In these two long poems, Browning can be seen engaged in the dialogue with Elizabeth that was to shape much of his work during the remainder of his writing life.

151 Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Saviour of Society

I slew the Hydra, and from labour pass’d

To labour—tribes of labours! Till, at last,

Attempting one more labour, in a trice,

Alack, with ills I crowned the edifice.

Text and publication

First publ. in Britain by Smith, Elder, 18 Dec. 1871, and in the United States by James R.Osgood & Co. in 1872, in a volume also containing Ffine at the Fair and Hervé Riel; repr. 1888. The MS used as printer’s copy is at Balliol College, Oxford: it was probably copied from a rough draft, but contains significant evidence of running revision and some drafting, with many interpolated lines: see below for a more detailed description. The American text (1872) was set from advance proofs, even though it was published well after the first English edition. A letter of 28 Mar. 1872 from James R. Osgood to B. may offer an explanation: Osgood refers to confusion over payment for Balaustion, and advises B. that proof sheets should be posted ‘at least four weeks before publication’ to ensure simultaneous publication in Britain and the United States (transcript at Wellesley College). 1872 gives some insight into the state of the proofs in the period shortly before publication. There are only six substantive verbal variants (see l. 605n.) but a host of variants in punctuation, spelling, and capitalization, affecting 729 lines (just over a third of the poem). Some of these variants (e.g. American spellings) were introduced by the printers, but it is clear that B. made many changes in punctuation after the despatch of the proofs to America. The issue of capitalization is harder to interpret: where upper-case forms appear in both MS and 1871, it seems likely that their conversion to lower-case in 1872 was done by the printers, unless we assume that B. changed all these forms in the proofs sent to America, and then changed them back again; however, there are puzzling inconsistencies in 1872, which retains some capitalizations and even introduces a handful of its own.

B. also sent proof sheets of the poem to his close friend, the French critic Joseph Milsand; Milsand’s suggested changes, and B.’s responses to them, are noted below at ll. 316, 336, 358, and 365–6. B. wrote to Milsand thanking him for his suggestions on 13 May 1872: ‘There is not one point to which you called attention which I was not thereby enabled to improve,—in some cases, essentially benefit. The punctuation was nearly as useful as the other more apparently important assistance … I like your corrections, and shall one day punctuate all my past work on that principle … The fact is, in the case of a writer with my peculiarities and habits, somebody quite ignorant of what I may have meant to write, and only occupied with what is really written,—ought to supervise the thing produced’ (ABL; full text in Scribner’s Magazine, July 1896, p. 111). B. took his own advice, sending many of his subsequent productions to Milsand at proof stage.

Revision in 1888 was light, and almost all in the second half of the poem; only a couple of passager seem to have caught B.’s eye (e.g. following l. 1321), and the persistence of errors originating in 1871 (especially affecting the placing of quotation marks around inset speeches) suggests that B. did not pay much attention to the text of the poem for this edition.

The manuscript

MS 389 at Balliol College, Oxford is the printer’s copy. It is bound with the MSS of Balaustion’s Adventure, Fifine at the Fair, and Aristophanes’ Apology, and consists of the title page and 69 leaves, numbered by twos (i.e. page 1 is followed by a page with no number, then page 2, then a page with no number, etc.; the only exception is page 6, which is followed by an unnumbered page and then a shortened page marked ‘6.*’). Both internal and external evidence (see below, Composition) suggest that B. was copying from a rough draft, freely revising and adding to the text as he did so. There are dozens of cancelled readings, many of which show B. changing his mind mid-way through a line; for a graphic example see l. 2059n. There are also many interpolated lines, though few of these introduce a new element into the text; almost all are expansions or modifications of the original draft, and there is no evidence that they belong to a second phase of composition: they are all in the same ink and orthography as the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Note by the General Editors
• Editorial Note to Volume IV
• Acknowledgements
• Chronology 1862–1871
• List of Illustrations
• Abbreviations
• 123 Deaf and Dumb
• 124 Caliban Upon Setebos
• 125 Too Late
• 126 Confessions
• 127 A Likeness
• 128 Rabbi Ben Ezra
• 129 James Lee [James Lee’s Wife]
• 130 Gold Hair
• 131 Dîs Aliter Visum
• 132 Youth and Art
• 133 The Worst of It
• 134 Apparent Failure
• 135 A Death in the Desert
• 136 Abt Vogler
• 137 Prospice
• 138 Mr. Sludge, “the Medium”
• 139 Epilogue [to Dramatis Personae]
• 140 Very Original Poem, written with even a greater endeavour than ordinary after intelligibility, and hitherto only published on the first leaf of the Author’s Son’s Account-book
• 141 Lines for a picture by Leighton [Eurydice to Orpheus]
• 142 Impromptu on Edward Burne-Jones
• 143 Hervé Riel
• 144 Epigram on Swinburne
• 145 Burlesque on the Pronunciation of ‘Metamorphosis’
• 146 A Round Robin
• 147 Helen’s Tower
• 148 The Dogma Triumphant
• 149 Mettle and Metal
• 150 Balaustion’s Adventure Including a Transcript from Euripides
• 151 Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Saviour of Society
• 152 Epigram on Dickens
• Appendix A. Fragment of Beatrice Signorini
• Appendix B. Note on Dramatis Personae
• Index of Titles and First Lines