cover image Robert Browning: A Life After Death

Robert Browning: A Life After Death

Pamela Neville-Sington, . . Weidenfeld & Nicolson/Phoenix, $16.95 (356pp) ISBN 978-0-7538-1864-0

Unlike most biographies of Browning, which focus on his romance with and marriage to Elizabeth Barrett, Neville-Sington (Fanny Trollope ) opens with the second act, after Elizabeth's death, when Browning won unexpected renown as the Victorian era's best poet after Tennyson, and its most eligible widower. Neville-Sington relates Browning's bourgeois concerns about raising his aimless son, dealing with the social demands of his own growing fame, preserving his wife's literary legacy and dodging romantic entanglements—all while experiencing renewed creativity. Browning completed his magnum opus, the epic Ring and the Book , which was well received by both critics and readers. Contrasting the Brownings' different poetic sensibilities and philosophic outlooks (as well as their popularity), Neville-Sington argues that Elizabeth's death "had somehow enabled his life—his poetry—to flourish." This biographic thesis of his wife's "opiate spell" may overstate Browning's fallow period and the quality of some of his later work. Neville-Sington fares better with her sensitive portrayal of Browning's mourning period and his emotional life during his widowerhood. His close relationships with the admiring Julia Wedgwood; capricious Louisa, Lady Ashburton; and regretful Katharine Bronson all contrast with the conventionally romantic depiction of his devotion to his wife and her memory. (Mar. 15)