The Complete Works of Robert Browning: Poems, Plays, Letters & Biographies in One Edition is a seminal collection encompassing the diverse talents of the renowned Victorian poet Robert Browning. This comprehensive volume showcases Browning's masterful use of dramatic monologues, intricate narratives, and profound exploration of human psychology. The wealth of poems, plays, and letters included in this edition invites readers to delve into Browning's complex and intellectual style, which influenced the development of modern poetry and literature. The biographies provide valuable insight into Browning's life and the creative process behind his works. This collection is a must-read for anyone interested in Victorian literature and the evolution of poetic form. Robert Browning, a prolific poet of the Victorian era, was known for his innovative use of dramatic monologues and psychological depth. His works reflects the intellectual and social climate of his time, addressing themes of love, faith, and society with a keen eye for human psychology. Browning's unique style and narrative techniques have solidified his place as one of the most influential poets of the 19th century. I highly recommend The Complete Works of Robert Browning to readers who appreciate profound poetry, intricate narratives, and psychological insight. This collection offers a comprehensive look at Browning's oeuvre and provides a valuable perspective on Victorian literature and poetry.

Volume 15 in The Complete Poetical Works of Robert Browning presents poetry Browning wrote in his seventies, his last two volumes: Parleyings (1887) and Asolando (1889). The former is the poet's last sustained meditation on life and on his times, a nine-section credo covering religion, history, poetry, politics, art, and music. Asolando is a coda to his whole oeuvre, a mixture of short love lyrics, historical monologues and anecdotes, light verse, and poems which are quite sui generis, all grouped around the theme of 'fancies and fact'. Both volumes are presented here with previously unknown sources, a wealth of new contextual material, and many textual nuances clarified, giving a fresh view of the last phase of Browning's career. What emerges is a poet more seriously Christian, Protestant, and Liberal than previously supposed, more interested in Britain's destiny and Empire, more enmeshed in the local battles of the 1880s?and a writer of considerable range and wit.

Annotation In the 1880s, the aging Browning showed once again the remarkable versatility of his lyric and narrative talents. Ranging across eras and cultures, the books here reveal his late thoughts about history, myth, legend, faith, love, and desire. He had never been more popular, and the founding of the Browning Society in 1881 expanded both his audience and his sense of his place in English letters. The first title in Volume XV is Dramatic Idylls, Second Series (1880). Taking his subjects from classical history, colonial India, Arabian legend, medieval sorcery, Jewish folk tales, and Greek myth, Browning startles the reader with the rapidity of his thought and the inventiveness of his art. In Jocoseria (1883) Browning’s subjects range across time and space from Hebraic legend to the England of the Romantics. Such variety helped attract new readers: Jocoseria was immediately successful, and a second edition was printed in the same year as the first. Although Browning’s next volume, Ferishtah’s Fancies (1884), was so popular that three editions were printed in less than two years, this artful string of anecdotes and lyrics has attracted little favorable criticism. The materials— Persian legends and Arabic backgrounds—chimed with the wildly popular Orientalism of FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát, Whistler’s Peacock Room, and Alma-Tadema’s paintings. But the thought was pure Browning in his most optimistic vein, and not at all in tune with the growing pessimism of the day. As always in this series of critical editions, a complete record of textual variants is provided, as well as extensive explanatory notes.