Biography

Ryals, Clyde de L. The Life of Robert Browning: A Critical Biography. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1993, 291 p.

Studies the poetical development of Browning, observing that Browning's poetry is informed both by Browning's "biographical presence" and his "biographical absence."

Criticism

Armstrong, Isobel. "Browning in the 1850s and After: New Experiments in Radical Poetry and the Grotesque." In Victorian Poetry: Poetry, Poetics and Politics, pp. 284-317. London: Routledge, 1993.

Explores the development of Browning's poetry following his 1846 marriage and the subsequent 1855 publication of Men and Women, examining in particular the poet's experiments with language and form.

Bristow, Joseph. Robert Browning. Harvester New Readings. Hertfordshire, England: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991, 178 p.

Provides a critical introduction to Browning's poetry, focusing on Browning's desire and struggle to impart his views regarding the "divine necessity of cultural change."

Buckler, William E. Poetry and Truth in Robert Browning's The Ring and the Book. New York: New York University Press, 1985, 293 p.

Book-length study of The Ring and the Book, focusing on the "poetry" and the "imagination" of the text rather than on the "learning" and "erudition" of it. Buckler maintains that Browning intended the poem to be "a course in critical-creative reading."

DeLaura, David J. "The Context of Browning's Painter Poems: Aesthetics, Polemics, Histories." PMLA 95, No. 3 (May 1980): 367-88.

Argues that Alexis François Rio's influential 1836 book on the depiction of Christian devotion in paintings provides the backdrop against which Browning's painter poems may be understood.

Gibson, Mary Ellis, ed. Critical Essays on Robert Browning. New York: G. K. Hall, 1992, 275 p.

Collection of contemporary essays analyzing the structure, style, and themes of Browning's poems.

Jack, Ian and Margaret Smith, eds. The Poetical Works of Robert Browning, Vols. I, II, III (edited by Ian Jack and Rowena Fowler), and IV (edited by Ian Jack, Rowena Fowler, and Margaret Smith). Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983, 1984, 1988, and 1991.

These volumes contain critical introductions to Pauline and Paracelsus (Vol. I); Strafford and Sordello II); and the individual poems contained in the Bells and Pomegranates series (Vols. III and IV). Volume IV also contains a critical introduction to Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day.

O'Neill, Patricia. Robert Browning and Twentieth-Century Criticism. Columbia, S.C.: Camden House, 1995, 157 p.

Discusses the history of Browning criticism, from the time of the poet's death in 1889 through the critical debates of the 1970s, 1980s and beyond.

Roberts, Adam. "Men and Women, 1855," in Robert Browning Revisited. New York: Twayne, 1996, pp. 57-74.

Argues for the unity of Browning's Men and Women.

——"Using Myth: Browning's Fifine at the Fair." Browning Society Notes 20, No. 1 (1990): 12-30.

Studies the mythological allusions in the poem to determine whether or not they are logically connected with one another. The critic also contends that classical mythic reference "underlies the broader message of the poem."

Slinn, E. Warwick. Browning and the Fictions of Identity. London: The Macmillan Press, Ltd., 1982, 173 p.

Explores Browning's conception of human psychology and personality as exemplified in the poet's dramatic monologues.

Tucker, Herbert F., Jr. Browning's Beginnings: The Art of Disclosure. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1980, 257 p.

Examines Browning's fascination with "the fatal, frightening, yet necessary muse of closure," maintaining that it is this interest of Browning's which motivates his "open-ended" poetry.

Woolford, John. Browning the Revisionary. London: The Macmillan Press Ltd., 1988, 233 p.

Argues that Browning's desire to achieve popular success colored the first thirty-six years of the poet's career, and that this ambition drove Browning's "self-revision," or "the practical application of his revision of Romantic aesthetics."

Additional coverage of Browning's life and works can be found in the following sources published by The Gale Group: Poetry Criticism, Vol. 2; World Literature Criticism, 1500 to the Present, Second Edition; and Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vols. 32 and 163.