Robert Browning
Robert Browning (7 May 1812 – 12 December 1889) was an English poet and playwright whose mastery of dramatic verse, especially dramatic monologues, made him one of the foremost Victorian poets. It was an obscure early poem Pauline that brought him to the attention of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, followed by Paracelsus, praised by Wordsworth and Dickens, among others. In 1846, Browning married Elizabeth Barrett, a poet more highly-regarded than him, and they went to live in Italy, a country that he called ‘my university’. At this time, he took exception to the spiritualist Daniel Dunglas Home and denounced his séances as fraudulent, though Elizabeth believed them to be genuine. By the time of her death in 1861, his stock was beginning to rise, with a major collection Men and Women, followed by the long blank-verse poem The Ring and the Book. He is better-known today for his shorter poems, such as The Pied Piper of Hamelin and How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix. His recital of the latter work during a dinner-party, recorded on an Edison wax cylinder, is believed to be the oldest surviving record by a notable person in England.