Daniel Karlin – författare

Robert Browning was one of the greatest of English poets, whose intense and original imagination enabled him to transform any subject he chose - whether everyday or sublime - into startling memorable verse. In his work he brought to life the personalities of a diverse range of characters, and introduced a new immediacy, colloquial energy and psychological complexity to the poetry of his day. This selection brings together verse ranging from early dramatic monologues such as the chilling 'My Last Duchess' and the ribald 'Fra Lippo Lippi', which show his gift for inhabiting the mind of another, to the popular children's poem 'The Pied Piper of Hamelin' and many lesser known works. All display his innovative techniques of diction, rhythm and symbol, which transformed Victorian poetry and influenced major poets of the twentieth century such as Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot and Robert Frost.

Daniel Karlin has selected poetry written and published during the reign of Queen Victoria, (1837-1901). Giving pride of place to Tennyson, Robert Browning, and Christina Rossetti, the volume offers generous selections from other major poets such asArnold, Emily Bronte, Hardy and Hopkins, and makes room for several poem-sequences in their entirety. It is wonderful, too, in its discovery and inclusion of eccentric, dissenting, un-Victorian voices, poets who squarely refuse to 'represent' their period. It also includes the work of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Meredith, James Thomson and Augusta Webster.

"Gr-r-r--there go, my heart's abhorrence!Water your damned flower-pots, do!If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence,God's blood, would not mine kill you!"The bitter and twisted monk of `Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister' is Browning's best-known hater, but hatred was a topic to which he returned again and again in both letters and poems. Daniel Karlin has written a perceptive and original study of Browning's hatreds, and their influence on his poetry.Browning was himself a `good hater', and Karlin analyses his hatreds of figures such as Wordsworth (the model for his `Lost Leader'), and more generally, tyranny and the abuse of power, and deceit or quackery in personal relationships or intellectual systems. Tracing the subtlest windings and branchings of Browning's idea of hatred through detailed discussion of key poems, the author shows how Browning's work displays an unequalled grasp of hatred as a personal emotion, as an intellectual principle, and as a source of artistic creativity. Particular attention is devoted to Browning's compulsive and compelling exploration of the duality of love and hate.

In 1846 Elizabeth Barrett rose from an invalid's bed to elope to Italy with Robert Browning. The secret courtship of the two poets--their long correspondence and their meetings in the shadow of Elizabeth's tyrannical father--has become one of the most celebrated romances of literary history. Based on a more intense study of the letters than has ever been attempted before, this book gives a fresh account of the powerful myth of Browning's chivalrous rescue and Barrett's miraculous recovery, examines anew the character and motivation of the three principals, and demonstrates what and important part the letters play in the interpretation of both poet's work.

The love letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett are among the most famous in literary history: intimate and sensitive, they illuminate both the writers' lives and their creative aims and methods. Daniel Karlin's selection, which complements his widely acclaimed The Courtship of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, is based on a fresh examination of the manuscripts and allows the reader to follow the story in all its scope and richness, from the beginning of their clandestine correspondence to their elopement in 1846.

'Hear and attend and listen...'Rudyard Kipling is a supreme master of the short story in English and a poet of brilliant gifts. His energy and inventiveness poured themselves into every kind of tale, from the bleakest of fables to the richest of comedies, and he illuminated every aspect of human behaviour, of which he was a fascinated (and sometimes appalled) observer. This generous selection of stories and poems, first published in the acclaimed Oxford Authors series, covers the full range of Kipling's career from the youthful volumes that brought him fame as the chronicler of British India, to the bittersweet fruits of age and bereavement in the aftermath of the First World War. It includes stories such as 'The Man who would be King', 'Mrs Bathurst', and 'Mary Postgate', and poems from Barrack-Room Ballads and other collections. In his introduction and notes Daniel Karlin addresses the controversial political engagement of Kipling's art, and the sources of its imaginative power.

This book, based on the Clarendon Lectures for 2016, is about the use made by poets and novelists of street songs and cries. Karlin begins with the London street-vendor's cry of 'Cherry-ripe!', as it occurs in poems from the sixteenth to the twentieth century: the 'Cries of London' (and Paris) exemplify the fascination of this urban art to writers of every period. Focusing on nineteenth and early twentieth century writers, the book traces the theme in works by William Wordsworth, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, Walt Whitman, George Gissing, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and Marcel Proust. As well as street-cries, these writers incorporate ballads, folk songs, religious and political songs, and songs of their own invention into crucial scenes, and the singers themselves range from a one-legged beggar in Dublin to a famous painter in fifteenth-century Florence. The book concludes with the beautiful and unlikely 'song' of a knife-grinder's wheel. Throughout the book Karlin emphasizes the rich complexity of his subject. The street singer may be figured as an urban Orpheus, enchanting the crowd and possessed of magical powers of healing and redemption; but the barbaric din of the modern city is never far away, and the poet who identifies with Orpheus may also dread his fate. And the fugitive, transient nature of song offers writers a challenge to their more structured art. Overheard in fragments, teasing, ungraspable, the street song may be 'captured' by a literary work but is never, finally, tamed.

Why did poets continue to call themselves singers, and their poems songs, long after the formal link between poetry and music had been severed? Daniel Karlin explores the origin and meaning of the 'figure of the singer', tracing its roots in classical mythology and in the Bible, and following its rise from the 'adventurous song' of Milton's Paradise Lost to its apotheosis in the nineteenth century-by which time it had also become an oppressive cliché. Poets might embrace, or resist, this dominant figure of their art, but could not ignore it. Shadowing the metaphor is another figure, that of the literal singer, a source of fascination, and rivalry, to poets who are confined to words on the page. The book opens with an emblematic figure of the greatest of all 'singers': Homer, playing his lyre, at the centre of the frieze of poets on the Albert Memorial in London. Chapters on the tragicomic rise and fall of 'the bard', on the link between female song and suffering, and on the metaphor of poetry as birdsong, are followed by detailed readings of poems by Tennyson, Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Walt Whitman, and Thomas Hardy. The final chapter, on the songs of Bob Dylan, suggests that recording technology has given fresh impetus to the quarrel (which is also a love-affair) between poetic language and song.The Figure of the Singer offers a profound and stimulating analysis of the idea of poetry as song and of the complex, troubled relations between voice and text

English is the 'second language' of A la recherche du temps perdu. Although much has been written about Proust's debt to English literature, especially Ruskin, Daniel Karlin is the first critic to focus on his knowledge of the language itself - on vocabulary, idiom, and etymology. He uncovers an 'English world' in Proust's work, a world whose social comedy and artistic values reveal surprising connections to some of the novel's central preoccupations with sexuality and art. Anglomanie- the fashion for all things English - has been as powerful a presence in French culture as hostility to perfide Albion; Proust was both subject to its influence, and a brilliant critic of its excesses. French resistance to imported English words remains fierce to this day; but Proust's attitude to this most contentious aspect of Anglo-French relations was marked by his rejection of concepts of national and racial 'purity', and his profound understanding of the necessary 'impurity' of artistic creation.

'My empire is of the imagination.' These are the words of Ayesha, the mysterious white queen of a Central African tribe, whose dread title, 'She-who-must-be-obeyed', testifies to her undying beauty and magical powers; but they serve equally well to describe the hold of her author, Henry Rider Haggard, on generations of readers. Writing 'at white heat', and in the flush of success after the publication of King Solomon's Mines, Haggard drew again on his knowledge of Africa and of ancient legends, but also on something deeper and more disturbing. To the Englishmen who journey through shipwreck, fever, and cannibals to her hidden realm, 'She' is the goal of a quest bequeathed to them two thousand years before; to Haggard's readers, 'She' is the embodiment of one of the most potent and ambivalent figures of Western mythology, a female who is both monstrous and desirable - and, without question, deadlier than the male. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

'The Moving Finger writes; and, having writMoves on: nor all thy Piety nor WitShall lure it back to cancel half a lineNor all thy tears wash out a word of it.'In the 'rubáiyát' (short epigrammatic poems) of the medieval Persian poet, mathematician, and philosopher Omar Khayyám, Edward FitzGerald saw an unflinching challenge to the illusions and consolations of mankind in every age. His version of Omar is neither a translation nor an independent poem; sceptical of divine providence and insistent on the pleasure of the passing moment, its 'Orientalism' offers FitzGerald a powerful and distinctive voice, in whose accents a whole Victorian generation comes to life. Although the poem's vision is bleak, it is conveyed in some of the most beautiful and haunting images in English poetry - and some of the sharpest- edged. The poem sold no copies at all on its first appearance in 1859, yet when it was 'discovered' two years later its first admirers included Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Swinburne, and Ruskin. Daniel Karlin's richly annotated edition does justice to the scope and complexity of FitzGerald's lyrical meditation on 'human death and fate'. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

The Poems of Browning is the first collected edition to be based on the earliest printed texts, and to present these texts in order of their composition.Together, volumes I and II provide an authoritative and accessible tribute to this great poet. Volume II, 1841-1846 includes Pippa Passes and many of the poems for which Browning is best known and loved: My Last Duchess, The Pied Piper of Hamelin, Home-Thoughts from Abroad, and The Lost Reader.

The Poems of Browningis a multi-volume edition of the poetry of Robert Browning (1812 -1889) resulting from a completely fresh appraisal of the canon, text and context of his work. The poems are presented in the order of their composition and in the text in which they were first published, giving a unique insight into the origins and development of Browning's art. Annotations and headnotes, in keeping with the traditions of Longman Annotated English Poets, are full and informative and provide details of composition, publication, sources and contemporary reception.Volumes one (1826-1840) and two (1841-1846) presented the poems from his early years up to his marriage to Elizabeth Barrett, including the dramatic poem Paracelsus (1835), which first brought him to wide attention, and Sordello (1840), which confirmed him as a poet of ambition and imagination.Volume three (1847-1861) of The Poems of Browning covers the years of Browning's life in Italy with his wife Elizabeth Barrett Browning. During the fifteen years of his marriage and self-imposed exile, Browning produced Christmas-Eve and Easter Day (1850), a major statement of his religious philosophy, and Men and Women (1855), his greatest collection of shorter poems. The poems of Men and Women, like all Browning's work, are steeped in his wide and idiosyncratic knowledge of literature, music, art, history, and popular culture, but a new and distinctive touch comes from the sights, sounds and textures of ordinary life in Italy. Based on a comprehensive study of textual and contextual sources, including a significant amount of hitherto undiscovered or unpublished manuscripts of poems and letters, this volume offers the most complete and informative edition of works that are central to Browning's achievement. In addition, Browning's most important work of critical prose, the Essay on Shelley, is presented in an appendix with full annotation, and poems which refer to specific works of painting or sculpture are illustrated with colour plates.Volumes four presents the poetry Browning produced during the decade following the death of his wife, including Dramatis Personae, which heralded a re-evaluation of his critical reputation, and The Ring and the Book, which many consider to be his greatest work. The Poems of Browning represents the most informative and up-to-date edition of the works of one of England's greatest poets.

Browning is best known for his development of the dramatic monologue, in which he recreated the world of Renaissance Italy. This work provides a thematic survey of Browning's often difficult work, using key poems as a common point of reference. Themes covered include styles, genres and the mind.

The Poems of Browning is the first collected edition to be based on the earliest printed texts, and to present these texts in order of their composition.Together, volumes I and II provide an authoritative and accessible tribute to this great poet. Volume I, 1826-1840 traces Browning's career up to the writing of Sordello. It includes his only surviving juvenilia: The Dance of Death and The First-Borm of Egypt; Pauline, his first anonymous publication, and Paracelsus, the poem which made his literary reputation.

The Cambridge Edition of the Complete Fiction of Henry James provides, for the first time, a scholarly edition of a major writer whose work continues to be read, quoted, adapted and studied. The Bostonians is an extraordinary political and psychological drama narrating the struggle between Northern feminist Olive Chancellor and her cousin, former slaveholder and radical conservative Basil Ransom, for 'possession' of the beautiful, talented Verena Tarrant. The issues raised of the relations between the sexes, between North and South and between differing visions of 'progress' in America are as timely - and contentious - as when the novel first appeared. This fully annotated scholarly edition of one of James's most distinctive and important works features a detailed contextual introduction, full textual history and helpful explanatory annotation. It will be of interest to researchers, scholars and advanced students of Henry James, and of nineteenth- and twentieth-century British and American fiction and literature.

The Ring and the Book, published serially in 1868–9, is one of the most daring and innovative poems in the English language. The story is based on the trial of an Italian nobleman, Guido Franceschini, for the murder of his wife Pompilia in Rome in 1698. Browning’s discovery of the ‘old yellow book’, a bundle of legal documents and letters relating to the trial, on a second-hand market stall in Florence, sparked an imaginative engagement with this sordid tale of domestic cruelty, adultery, and greed which grew, through four years of arduous labour, into an epic peopled not by gods and warriors but by concrete, recognisably human beings. Fusing the technique of the dramatic monologue, the form he had made his own, with the grandeur of classical epic and the vivid realism of the modern novel, Browning created a unique hybrid form that allowed him not only to bring to life an entire historical period but also to reflect on the process of artistic creation itself – the forging of the golden ‘ring’ of the poem from the ‘pure crude fact’ of its historical original. This edition, comprising volumes 5 and 6 in the acclaimed Longman Annotated English Poets edition of Browning’s poems, does full justice to the scope and depth of Browning’s achievement. The headnote in volume 5 gives an authoritative account of the poem’s composition, publication, sources, and reception, making use of hitherto unpublished letters and textual material. In addition to giving readers help, where needed, with historical and linguistic comprehension, the notes track Browning’s formidable range of allusion, from the most erudite to the most vulgar. The appendices in volume 6 present a selection from the original sources, a list of variants from extant proofs, and key passages from Browning’s fascinating and revealing correspondence with one of the earliest readers of the poem, Julia Wedgwood. The aim is to enable readers not just to understand the poem as an object of study, but to take pleasure in its abounding intellectual and emotional energies.

The Ring and the Book, published serially in 1868–9, is one of the most daring and innovative poems in the English language. The story is based on the trial of an Italian nobleman, Guido Franceschini, for the murder of his wife Pompilia in Rome in 1698.Browning’s discovery of the ‘old yellow book’, a bundle of legal documents and letters relating to the trial, on a second-hand market stall in Florence, sparked an imaginative engagement with this sordid tale of domestic cruelty, adultery, and greed which grew, through four years of arduous labour, into an epic peopled not by gods and warriors but by concrete, recognizably human beings. Fusing the technique of the dramatic monologue, the form he had made his own, with the grandeur of classical epic and the vivid realism of the modern novel, Browning created a unique hybrid form that allowed him not only to bring to life an entire historical period but also to reflect on the process of artistic creation itself —the forging of the golden ‘ring’ of the poem from the ‘pure crude fact’ of its historical original. This edition, comprising volumes 5 and 6 in the acclaimed Longman Annotated English Poets edition of Browning’s poems, does full justice to the scope and depth of Browning’s achievement. The headnote in volume 5 gives an authoritative account of the poem’s composition, publication, sources, and reception, making use of hitherto unpublished letters and textual material. In addition to giving readers help, where needed, with historical and linguistic comprehension, the notes track Browning’s formidable range of allusion, from the most erudite to the most vulgar. The appendices in volume 6 present a selection from the original sources, a list of variants from extant proofs, and key passages from Browning’s fascinating and revealing correspondence with one of the earliest readers of the poem, Julia Wedgwood. The aim is to enable readers not just to understand the poem as an object of study, but to take pleasure in its abounding intellectual and emotional energies.

The Ring and the Book, published serially in 1868–9, is one of the most daring and innovative poems in the English language. The story is based on the trial of an Italian nobleman, Guido Franceschini, for the murder of his wife Pompilia in Rome in 1698.Browning’s discovery of the ‘old yellow book’, a bundle of legal documents and letters relating to the trial, on a second-hand market stall in Florence, sparked an imaginative engagement with this sordid tale of domestic cruelty, adultery, and greed which grew, through four years of arduous labour, into an epic peopled not by gods and warriors but by concrete, recognizably human beings. Fusing the technique of the dramatic monologue, the form he had made his own, with the grandeur of classical epic and the vivid realism of the modern novel, Browning created a unique hybrid form that allowed him not only to bring to life an entire historical period but also to reflect on the process of artistic creation itself —the forging of the golden ‘ring’ of the poem from the ‘pure crude fact’ of its historical original. This edition, comprising volumes 5 and 6 in the acclaimed Longman Annotated English Poets edition of Browning’s poems, does full justice to the scope and depth of Browning’s achievement. The headnote in volume 5 gives an authoritative account of the poem’s composition, publication, sources, and reception, making use of hitherto unpublished letters and textual material. In addition to giving readers help, where needed, with historical and linguistic comprehension, the notes track Browning’s formidable range of allusion, from the most erudite to the most vulgar. The appendices in volume 6 present a selection from the original sources, a list of variants from extant proofs, and key passages from Browning’s fascinating and revealing correspondence with one of the earliest readers of the poem, Julia Wedgwood. The aim is to enable readers not just to understand the poem as an object of study, but to take pleasure in its abounding intellectual and emotional energies.

The Poems of Browningis a multi-volume edition of the poetry of Robert Browning (1812 -1889) resulting from a completely fresh appraisal of the canon, text and context of his work. The poems are presented in the order of their composition and in the text in which they were first published, giving a unique insight into the origins and development of Browning's art. Annotations and headnotes, in keeping with the traditions of Longman Annotated English Poets, are full and informative and provide details of composition, publication, sources and contemporary reception. Volumes one (1826-1840) and two (1841-1846) presented the poems from his early years up to his marriage to Elizabeth Barrett, including the dramatic poem Paracelsus (1835), which first brought him to wide attention, and Sordello (1840), which confirmed him as a poet of ambition and imagination.Volume three (1847-1861) of The Poems of Browning covers the years of Browning's life in Italy with his wife Elizabeth Barrett Browning. During the fifteen years of his marriage and self-imposed exile, Browning produced Christmas-Eve and Easter Day (1850), a major statement of his religious philosophy, and Men and Women (1855), his greatest collection of shorter poems. The poems of Men and Women, like all Browning's work, are steeped in his wide and idiosyncratic knowledge of literature, music, art, history, and popular culture, but a new and distinctive touch comes from the sights, sounds and textures of ordinary life in Italy. Based on a comprehensive study of textual and contextual sources, including a significant amount of hitherto undiscovered or unpublished manuscripts of poems and letters, this volume offers the most complete and informative edition of works that are central to Browning's achievement. In addition, Browning's most important work of critical prose, the Essay on Shelley, is presented in an appendix with full annotation, and poems which refer to specific works of painting or sculpture are illustrated with colour plates.Volumes four presents the poetry Browning produced during the decade following the death of his wife, including Dramatis Personae, which heralded a re-evaluation of his critical reputation, and The Ring and the Book, which many consider to be his greatest work. The Poems of Browning represents the most informative and up-to-date edition of the works of one of England's greatest poets.

The Poems of Robert Browning is a multi-volume edition of the poetry of Robert Browning (1812 -1889) resulting from a completely fresh appraisal of the canon, text and context of his work. The poems are presented in the order of their composition and in the text in which they were first published, giving a unique insight into the origins and development of Browning's art. Annotations and headnotes, in keeping with the traditions of Longman Annotated English Poets, are full and informative and provide details of composition, publication, sources and contemporary reception. Volumes one (1826-1840) and two (1841-1846) presented the poems from his Browning's early years, while volume three (1847-61) covered the period of his marriage to Elizabeth Barrett and residence in Italy. Volume four (1862-71) deals with the decade following Elizabeth's death and Browning's return to England. These years saw the appearance of some of his most significant work, and a steady rise in his critical reputation. In Dramatis Personae (1864), Browning uses his characteristic "dramatic" mode to expose predicaments of thought and feeling, in characters ranging from Shakespeare's Caliban to the cheating medium, "Mr Sludge"; other poems dramatize Browning's complicated feelings about the deceptions and self-deceptions of romantic love. Balaustion's Adventure (1871) is an engaging reworking of Euripides' Alcestis, whose theme, the resurrection of a beloved lost wife, has poignant personal resonance for Browning;while Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, published in the same year, offers a thinly-veiled account of the life and actions of Napoleon III, the recently deposed Emperor of France, over whom Browning and Elizabeth had quarrelled. In these two long poems, Browning can be seen engaged in the dialogue with Elizabeth that was to shape much of his work during the remainder of his writing life.

The Poems of Browning is the first collected edition to be based on the earliest printed texts, and to present these texts in order of their composition.Together, volumes I and II provide an authoritative and accessible tribute to this great poet. Volume I, 1826-1840 traces Browning's career up to the writing of Sordello. It includes his only surviving juvenilia: The Dance of Death and The First-Borm of Egypt; Pauline, his first anonymous publication, and Paracelsus, the poem which made his literary reputation.

The Poems of Browning is the first collected edition to be based on the earliest printed texts, and to present these texts in order of their composition.Together, volumes I and II provide an authoritative and accessible tribute to this great poet. Volume II, 1841-1846 includes Pippa Passes and many of the poems for which Browning is best known and loved: My Last Duchess, The Pied Piper of Hamelin, Home-Thoughts from Abroad, and The Lost Reader.

The Cambridge Edition of the Complete Fiction of Henry James provides, for the first time, a scholarly edition of a major writer whose work continues to be read, quoted, adapted and studied. The Bostonians is an extraordinary political and psychological drama narrating the struggle between Northern feminist Olive Chancellor and her cousin, former slaveholder and radical conservative Basil Ransom, for 'possession' of the beautiful, talented Verena Tarrant. The issues raised of the relations between the sexes, between North and South and between differing visions of 'progress' in America are as timely - and contentious - as when the novel first appeared. This fully annotated scholarly edition of one of James's most distinctive and important works features a detailed contextual introduction, full textual history and helpful explanatory annotation. It will be of interest to researchers, scholars and advanced students of Henry James, and of nineteenth- and twentieth-century British and American fiction and literature.

Robert Browning (1812 – 1889) was one of the defining figures of the Victorian age. Famous in his lifetime for his elopement and marriage to Elizabeth Barratt, his critical reputation grew steadily in the years following her early death. Browning’s mastery of dramatic verse was evident throughout his career, from such chillingly unforgettable monologues as ‘My Last Duchess’ and ‘Porphyria’ to the mature work included in his collection Dramatis Personae. This selection, chosen by leading scholars, reveals the innovation, complexity and profound psychological insight that have ensured Browning’s enduring reputation and his continuing appeal to readers today. Browning: Selected Poems results from a completely fresh appraisal of the canon, text and context of the writer’s work. The poems are presented in the order of their composition and in the text in which they were first published, giving a unique insight into the development of Browning’s art. An introduction and chronology offer useful background material, whilst annotations and headnotes provide details of composition, publication, sources and contemporary reception. This authoritative yet accessible selection should become the first point of reference for scholar, student and general reader alike.

Robert Browning (1812 – 1889) was one of the defining figures of the Victorian age. Famous in his lifetime for his elopement and marriage to Elizabeth Barratt, his critical reputation grew steadily in the years following her early death. Browning’s mastery of dramatic verse was evident throughout his career, from such chillingly unforgettable monologues as ‘My Last Duchess’ and ‘Porphyria’ to the mature work included in his collection Dramatis Personae. This selection, chosen by leading scholars, reveals the innovation, complexity and profound psychological insight that have ensured Browning’s enduring reputation and his continuing appeal to readers today. Browning: Selected Poems results from a completely fresh appraisal of the canon, text and context of the writer’s work. The poems are presented in the order of their composition and in the text in which they were first published, giving a unique insight into the development of Browning’s art. An introduction and chronology offer useful background material, whilst annotations and headnotes provide details of composition, publication, sources and contemporary reception. This authoritative yet accessible selection should become the first point of reference for scholar, student and general reader alike.

The Ring and the Book, published serially in 1868–9, is one of the most daring and innovative poems in the English language. The story is based on the trial of an Italian nobleman, Guido Franceschini, for the murder of his wife Pompilia in Rome in 1698. Browning’s discovery of the ‘old yellow book’, a bundle of legal documents and letters relating to the trial, on a second-hand market stall in Florence, sparked an imaginative engagement with this sordid tale of domestic cruelty, adultery, and greed which grew, through four years of arduous labour, into an epic peopled not by gods and warriors but by concrete, recognisably human beings. Fusing the technique of the dramatic monologue, the form he had made his own, with the grandeur of classical epic and the vivid realism of the modern novel, Browning created a unique hybrid form that allowed him not only to bring to life an entire historical period but also to reflect on the process of artistic creation itself – the forging of the golden ‘ring’ of the poem from the ‘pure crude fact’ of its historical original. This edition, comprising volumes 5 and 6 in the acclaimed Longman Annotated English Poets edition of Browning’s poems, does full justice to the scope and depth of Browning’s achievement. The headnote in volume 5 gives an authoritative account of the poem’s composition, publication, sources, and reception, making use of hitherto unpublished letters and textual material. In addition to giving readers help, where needed, with historical and linguistic comprehension, the notes track Browning’s formidable range of allusion, from the most erudite to the most vulgar. The appendices in volume 6 present a selection from the original sources, a list of variants from extant proofs, and key passages from Browning’s fascinating and revealing correspondence with one of the earliest readers of the poem, Julia Wedgwood. The aim is to enable readers not just to understand the poem as an object of study, but to take pleasure in its abounding intellectual and emotional energies.