Author: Browning, Robert
Biography:
BROWNING, Robert (1812-89: ODNB)
He was born in Camberwell, London, on 7 May 1812 to Robert Browning and his wife Sarah Anna Wiedemann. A sister, Sarianna, was born in 1814. He was a precocious child who, despite being sent to various schools, did most of his learning and reading at home. He began writing verse from an early age although almost nothing of his juvenilia survives. He enrolled in the University of London in 1828 but withdrew after a year. His first published poem, Pauline, was issued anonymously in 1833. In 1834-35 he travelled abroad and began writing Paracelsus on his return to England; it received encouraging reviews and he felt that he had discovered his path in life. Browning continued writing formally and thematically innovative verse for the rest of his life—his final work, Asolando, was issued in the year of his death—and he established a reputation as one of the most important English poets of his generation. He met Elizabeth Barrett (q.v.) in 1845; against her father’s opposition, they were secretly married in St. Marylebone on 12 Sept. 1846 and a week later left England for Italy. Their son Robert Wiedeman Barrett Browning (“Pen”) was born in Florence on 9 Mar. 1849. They lived mainly in Italy and France but returned to England in 1852 when Browning took the manuscript of his Men and Women to his publisher. Elizabeth died in Florence on 29 June 1861 and Browning and Pen moved to London where they lived with Sarianna at 19 Warwick Crescent. His The Ring and the Book, based on documents he had purchased in Florence, was published in instalments in 1868-69 and was hailed as a major achievement. In later life Browning was disappointed in Pen who, having been admitted to Christ Church, Oxford, failed his examinations and had to leave the university. In 1879 Cambridge awarded him an LLD and in 1882 Oxford gave him an honorary DCL. In 1881 the Browning Society was established and rapidly spread beyond England. In 1887 he and Sarianna moved to 18 De Vere Gardens in Kensington. He was with Sarianna visiting Pen and his wife in Venice when he died on 12 Dec. 1889. He had wanted to be buried with Elizabeth in Florence but the cemetery had been closed. The Dean of Westminster offered burial in Westminster Abbey and his body was returned to London where a public funeral and burial in Poets’ Corner took place on 31 Dec. 1889. The memorial stone of Italian marble with porphyry also commemorates Elizabeth. (ODNB 8 Sept. 2023; westminster-abbey.org 8 Sept. 2023) SR