This volume offers a generous selection of works from each of Browning's creative periods, emphasizing the years in which the memorable dramatic monologueswere written. The experimental phase is represented byselections from Pauline, Paracelsus, Sordello,Dramatic Lyrics, and Dramatic Romances and Lyrics ,as well as the complete text of Pippa Passes ; the major phase by selections from Men and Women , DramatisPersonae, and The Ring and the Book , from whichBooks Ⅴ,Ⅵ, and Ⅹ are reprinted; and the later achievement by selections from Fifine at the Fair , Aristophanes'Apology , Pacchiarotto and How He Worked in Distemper:With Other Poems , Jocoseria , Parleying with CertainPeople of Importance in Their Day , and Asolando: Fanciesand Facts .

Preface

Browning： A Chronology

List of Abbreviations

The Texts of the Poems

 A Note on the Texts

 The Experimental Phase (1833-45)

From Pauline (1833)

From Paracelsus (1835)

From Sordello (184o)

Pippa Passes (1841 )

From Dramatic Lyrics (1842)

  My Last Duchess

  Count Gismond

  Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister

  In a Gondola

  Cristina

  Johannes Agricola in Meditation

  Porphyria's Lover

  The Pied Piper of Hamelin

From Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1845)

  "How They Brought the Good News

     from Ghent to Aix"

  Pictor Ignotus

  Home-Thoughts, from Abroad

  ["Here's to Nelson's Memory!"]

  Home-Thoughts, from the Sea

  The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St. Praxed's Church

  The Laboratory

  Meeting at Night; Parting at Morning

  Nationality in Drinks

 The Major Phase (x855-&))

From Men and Women(1855)

  Love Among the Ruins

  A Lovers' Quarrel

  Evelyn Hope

  Up at a Villa--Down in the City

  A Woman's Last Word

  Fra Lippo Lippi

  A Toccata of Galuppi's

  By the Fire-Side

 Any Wife to Any Husband

 An Epistle... of Karshish, the Arab Physician

 My Star

 "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came"

 Respectability

A Light Woman

The Statue and the Bust

 How It Strikes a Contemporary

The Last Ride Together

Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha

Bishop Blougram's Apology

Memorabilia

Andrea del Sarto

Saul [final version]

Women and Roses

Holy-Cross Day

The Guardian-Angel

Cleon

Popularity

Two in the Campagna

A Grammarian's Funeral

"Transcendentalism： A Poem in Twelve Books"

One Word More

  From Dramatis Personae ( 1864)

James Lee's Wife

Dis aliter Visum

Abt Vogler

Rabbi Ben Ezra

Caliban upon Setebos

Confessions

Prospiee

Apparent Failure

Epilogue

  From The Ring and the Book (1868-69)

Book V. Count Guido Franceschini

Book VI. Giuseppe Caponsacchi

Book X. The Pope

The Later Achievement (after 187o)

 From Fifine at the Fair (1872)

Prologue (Amphibian)

Epilogue (The Householder)

 From Aristophanes' Apology (1875)

[Thamuris Marching]

 From Pacchiarotto and How He Worked in Distemper：

  With Other Poems (1876)

House

Fears and Scruples

Numpholeptos

From Jocoseria (1883 )

  Adam, Lilith, and Eve

  Never the Time and the Place

From Parleyings with Certain People of Importance

    in Their Day (1887)

  With Christopher Smart

From Asolando： Fancies and Facts (1889)

  Prologue

  Bad Dreams, Ⅰ-Ⅳ

  "Imperante Augusto Natus Est--"

  Development

  Epilogue

 Prose

From "Introductory Essay" to the Letters

   of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1852 )

Criticism

 Victorian Views

  John Forster · Evidences of a New Genius for

     Dramatic Poetry

  Thomas Carlyle · [Letter to Browning]

  George Eliot · [Review of Men and Women]

  William Morris · [Browning's Alleged Carelessness]

  John Ruskin · [Browning and the Italian

     Renaissance]

  Walter Bagehot · [Browning's Grotesque Art]

  Robert W. Buchanan · [The Ring and the Book]

  Alfred Austin · The Poetry of the Period：

     Mr. Browning

  Algernon Charles Swinburne · [Browning's Obscurity1

  Gerard Manley Hopkins · [Strictures on Browning]

  Oscar Wilde · [Browning as "Writer of Fiction"]

  Henry ]ames · Browning in Westminster Abbey

 Modern Essays in Criticism

Revaluations

  George Santayana · The Poetry of Barbarism

  G. K. Chesterton · [Reply to Santayana]

  William O. Raymond · The Infinite Moment

  J. Hillis Miller · [Browning's Language]

The Dramatic Monologue

  Robert Langbaum · The Dramatic Monologue：

     Sympathy versus Judgment

Interpretations of Poems

  W. David Shaw · Browning's Duke as Theatrical

     Producer ["My Last Duchess"]

  Harold Bloom · Browning's "Childe Roland"：

     All Things Deformed and Broken

  F. E. L. Priestley · Blougram's Apologetics

  Roma A. King, Jr. · Eve and the·Virgin：

     "Andrea del Sarto"

  E. D. H. Johnson ·Robert Browning's Pluralistic

     Universe： A Reading of The Ring and the Book

Selected Bibliography

Index of Titles