Robert Browning: A Life After Death - Softcover

Neville-Sington, Pamela

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0753818647 ISBN 13: 9780753818640

Publisher: Phoenix, 2005

Synopsis

Robert Browning spent fifteen years married to fellow poet Elizabeth Barrett. He was 49 when Elizabeth died, and it is her death that is the starting point of this new biography. The central drama of Browning’s life was the conflict between his need to put his marriage behind him, and his overwhelming desire to cling to his wife’s memory and preserve the literary myth of their marriage. But this was also a time when the poetic inspiration that had for years eluded him began to flourish once more as Browning sought to live, and possibly love, again. Pamela Neville-Sington is the author of the highly praised Fanny Trollope: The Life and Adventures of a Clever Woman.

About this title

About the Author:

Educated at Harvard and Oxford Universities, Pamela Neville-Sington is the author of the highly praised Fanny Trollope: The Life and Adventures of a Clever Woman.

From Publishers Weekly:

Unlike most biographies of Browning, which focus on his romance with and marriage to Elizabeth Barrett, Neville-Sington (Fanny Trollope) opens with the second act, after Elizabeth's death, when Browning won unexpected renown as the Victorian era's best poet after Tennyson, and its most eligible widower. Neville-Sington relates Browning's bourgeois concerns about raising his aimless son, dealing with the social demands of his own growing fame, preserving his wife's literary legacy and dodging romantic entanglements—all while experiencing renewed creativity. Browning completed his magnum opus, the epic Ring and the Book, which was well received by both critics and readers. Contrasting the Brownings' different poetic sensibilities and philosophic outlooks (as well as their popularity), Neville-Sington argues that Elizabeth's death "had somehow enabled his life—his poetry—to flourish." This biographic thesis of his wife's "opiate spell" may overstate Browning's fallow period and the quality of some of his later work. Neville-Sington fares better with her sensitive portrayal of Browning's mourning period and his emotional life during his widowerhood. His close relationships with the admiring Julia Wedgwood; capricious Louisa, Lady Ashburton; and regretful Katharine Bronson all contrast with the conventionally romantic depiction of his devotion to his wife and her memory. (Mar. 15)
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About this edition

• Publisher: Phoenix
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0753818647
• ISBN 13: 9780753818640
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368