Robert Browning

Robert Browning attended a private grammar school and then enjoyed the luxury of tutors in his home. By the age of fourteen he had learned Latin, Greek, French, and Italian. After fourteen, he received no formal education but was a prolific reader in his father's library. This included reading all fifty volumes of a set of reference books!



Browning often chose to read books that were not well known to others. This resulted in his having a vast knowledge of literature rarely familiar to other people. Thus his poems frequently included allusions his readers did not recognize. His early poems included so many of these obscure references that they earned him a reputation for being difficult to read and almost impossible to understand. Ultimately Browning realized that much of what he knew was not known by his readers, and he was able to moderate the difficulty of his poetry.



Browning enjoyed foreign traveled, which included trips to St. Petersburg, Russia, and Italy. During his second visit to Italy in 1844, he read a poem by Elizabeth Barrett, the best-known female poet in England, and one whose works he greatly admired. This particular poem commended his poetry!



Browning responded with a letter expressing his admiration. This eventually led to a personal meeting of the two poets in May 1845. During the next fifteen months they exchanged poems and hundreds of letters (573 of hers remain) and enjoyed ninety-one meetings in her father's home. The first time they were together outside his home, they married. This was on September 12, 1846, at St. Marylebone Parish Church in London, England. He was 34 and she was 40.





The couple's unusual courtship, consisting entirely of letters and visits Browning made to Barrett in her father's home, was a result of two unusual circumstances. First, Barrett's father, Edward Moulton-Barrett, was an extremely dominating and excessively possessive individual. He had forbidden his children to marry. Second, Elizabeth Barrett was a semi-invalid recluse who had spent years living almost entirely in her bedroom, pursuing her studies, writing poetry, and seeing only one or two people other than her immediate family.



During the fifteen years Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning lived in Florence, Italy, their home, Casa Guidi, was a literary and cultural center. Both the Brownings pursued their writing careers as well as their personal interests; often their poems reflected their interests. Mrs. Browning's passions were social reform and current Italian politics. Her works reflected her interest in child labor, the rights of women, the oppression of the lower classes, the American slave trade, and Italian independence. Robert Browning's interests focused on the fine arts, including literature, sculpture, paintings, and music, as well as on the history of Italy and her people.



During Elizabeth Browning's lifetime, Robert Browning's poetry was a mere shadow of hers. She remained throughout her life one of the most popular and the most highly esteemed English poets. She had begun writing as a child; her first published poem was printed when she was 13. Her work began to attract public attention by the time she was twenty.



The best known begins, "How do I loved thee? Let me count the ways." These beautiful poems were written for Robert Browning only. However, when he read them, he insisted upon their publication, which occurred in 1850.



After Mrs. Browning’s death, Robert and Pen Browning moved to England. Browning's poetic career flourished; he is now one of the most highly regarded English writers. He died in Venice, Italy, on December 12, 1889, and was buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey in London, England.