'In the old editions one saw Browning's poetry, as it were, through the wrong end of a telescope: now it suddenly comes into focus under a high-powered magnifying-glass...Ian Jack and Rowena Fowler are making a collection as sumptuous as Aladdin's cave, wonderfully easy to read, and with introductions as absorbing as the poems and plays have now become.' John Bayley, London Review of Books

'In the old editions one saw Browning's poetry, as it were, through the wrong end of a telescope: now it suddenly comes into focus under a high-powered magnifying-glass...Ian Jack and Rowena Fowler are making a collection as sumptuous as Aladdin's cave, wonderfully easy to read, and with introductions as absorbing as the poems and plays have now become.' John Bayley, London Review of Books

'In the old editions one saw Browning's poetry, as it were, through the wrong end of a telescope: now it suddenly comes into focus under a high-powered magnifying-glass...Ian Jack and Rowena Fowler are making a collection as sumptuous as Aladdin's cave, wonderfully easy to read, and with introductions as absorbing as the poems and plays have now become.' John Bayley, London Review of Books