The Oxford Companion to English Literature | 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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