Browning, Robert
Browning, Robert ( 1812 – 89 ),the son of Robert Browning (d. 1866 ), a clerk in the Bank of England, and Sarah Anna Wiedemann (d. 1849 ), of German-Scottish descent, brought up with his only sister Sarianna in Camberwell in south-east London, receiving his education mainly in his father's large (6,000 vols) and eclectic library. The contrasting influences of his boyhood were those of his reading (particularly of Shelley , Byron , and Keats ) and of his mother's strong Nonconformist piety. He wrote a volume of lyric poems, Incondita, at the age of 12, but subsequently destroyed them: two survive. In 1828 he enrolled at London University, but dropped out in his second term. His first published poem, Pauline , appeared anonymously in 1833 and attracted little notice. Browning travelled to Russia in 1834 and made his first trip to Italy in 1838 . Paracelsus ( 1835 ) was a...
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