Victorian Poetry

This year brings the good news of a major National Endowment for the Humanities grant, awarded to Philip Kelley and Edward Hagan for their vital scholarly work in assembling and editing the correspondence of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, together with all extant letters written to both poets. The NEH grant, sponsored by the Armstrong Browning Library at Baylor University, will fund the preparation of volumes 31 through 33 of The Brownings’ Correspondence. The meticulous work of Philip Kelley and his team has involved not only locating and transcribing the correspondence but also dating this material and producing annotations that provide a context for each letter. The scholarly standards applied in this project, as well as the deep knowledge of the poet, his life, and his career that informs the editing process, will ensure a lasting foundation for Browning studies.

While the long-term closure of interlibrary loan and other library services during the pandemic has presented challenges for reviewers, this year in Browning nonetheless brings work with new insights to offer. In addition to volume 27 of The Brownings’ Correspondence, essays by Laura Clarke and Simon Jarvis suggest new ways of reading Browning’s poetic theory and practice. Clarke studies Browning’s indebtedness to idealist philosophy and Thomas Carlyle, and Jarvis recasts Sordello (1840) as an innovative text in its own right, rather than as a communicative failure or a stepping stone to the dramatic monologues. Artist networks and relationships of influence between Browning and other writers are the subject of numerous articles. Daniel Karlin examines Browning’s impact on Kipling, and Gal Manor reads Browning’s “Pietro of Abano” (1880) as a response to Tennyson. Oliver Wort reveals notes toward a hitherto unknown plan to stage “Fra Lippo Lippi” (1855) by director Edward Gordon Craig (1872–1966), and Abigail Montgomery reflects on “Childe Roland” (1855) as an intertext in Yeats’s poetry and the novels of Stephen King. Browning’s prosody is also treated in Jarvis and in an article by Yann Tholoniat.

The Brownings’ Correspondence, vol. 27 (October 1859–May 1860), eds. Philip Kelley, Edward Hagan, and Linda M. Lewis (Winfield, Kans: Wedgestone Press, 2020)

Volume 27 of The Brownings’ Correspondence covers the aftermath of the Second Italian War of Independence, during which the French and Piedmont-Sardinians [End Page 331] had fought against Austria. Elizabeth Barrett Browning remains deeply involved in following political events, expressing unwavering faith in Louis-Napoleon, who would ultimately annex Nice and Savoy for France. Barrett Browning attributes her recent illness in part to “agitation of mind on account of public affairs, combined with a great deal too much talking, and some sort of cold-catching” (p. 6). The volume opens with a letter from Robert Browning, in which he writes of their return to Florence from a month in Siena (p. 1). Barrett Browning’s health is improving, but Browning notes “we shall be forced to go to Rome for the winter” for the warmer climate (p. 1). This period in the Brownings’ lives is also marked by the publication of Barrett Browning’s Poems before Congress (1860) and the mysterious disintegration of the Brownings’ friendship with Sophia Eckley. The reasons for the loss of trust are alluded to but never explained. Barrett Browning does comment that she now doubts Eckley as a medium, and she expresses her distaste for Eckley’s desire that the Brownings endorse her book (pp. 166–168, 316). Browning’s friendship with Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864) is one of the highlights of this volume, which contains not only correspondence between Browning and Landor’s niece, Sophia, on the subject of his care, but also lively letters sent to Browning by Landor, illuminating presumably shared intellectual interests. Barrett Browning reports on the summer in Siena to Anna Jameson, noting that when she had been well enough, she and Robert “drove about” together “& enjoyed the lovely country” (p. 4). Robert, she declares, “was perfect to me—too good indeed for until the last fortnight, he insisted on undertaking all Pen’s lessons” (p. 4).

Browning’s correspondence with Sophia Landor and others presents a portrait of Walter Savage Landor, whose de...