1. Life and literary activity of Robert Browning. Analysis of Robert Browning's works

Analysis of Historical Setting in the poems of Robert Browning
Introduction
1. Life and literary activity of Robert Browning.
2. Analysis of Robert Browning's works.
3. Analysis of Historical Setting of poems of Robert Browning.

1. 
   Life and literary activity of Robert Browning.
   

Family background- The English poet Robert Browning (1812-1889) was born at Camberwell, London, on the 7th of May 1812. He was the son of Robert Browning (1781-1866), who for fifty years was employed in the Bank of England. Earlier Brownings had been settled in Wiltshire and Dorsetshire, and there is no ground for the statement that the family was partly of Jewish origin. The poet’s mother was a daughter of William Wiedemann, a German who had settled in Dundee and married a Scottish wife.
His parents had one other child, a daughter, Sarianna, born in 1814. They lived quietly in Camberwell. The elder Browning had a sufficient income and was indifferent to money-making. He had strong literary and artistic tastes. He was an ardent book collector, and so good a draughtsman that paternal authority alone had prevented him from adopting an artistic career. He had, like his son, a singular faculty for versifying, and helped the boy’s early lessons by twisting the Latin grammar into grotesque rhymes. He lived, as his father had done, to be 84, with unbroken health. The younger Robert inherited, along with other characteristics, much of his father’s vigour of constitution. From the mother, who had delicate health, he probably derived his excessive nervous irritability; and from her, too, came his passion for music. The family was united by the strongest mutual affection, and the parents erred, if anything, on the side of indulgence.
Childhood-Browning was sent to a school in the neighbourhood, but left it when fourteen, and had little other teaching. He had a French tutor for the next two years, and in his eighteenth year he attended some Greek lectures at the London University. At school he never won a prize, though it was more difficult to avoid than to win prizes. He was more conspicuous for the love of birds and beasts, which he always retained, than for any interest in his lessons. He rather despised his companions and made few friends. A precocious poetical capacity, however, showed itself in extra-scholastic ways. He made his schoolfellows act plays, partly written by himself.
He had composed verses before he could write, and when twelve years old completed a volume of poems called Incondita. His parents tried unsuccessfully to find a publisher; but his verses were admired by Sarah Flower, afterwards Mrs Adams, a well-known hymn-writer of the day, and by W.J. Fox, both of whom became valuable friends. A copy made by Miss Flower was in existence in 1871, but afterwards destroyed by the author.
Browning had the run of his father’s library, and acquired a very unusual amount of miscellaneous reading. Quarles’ Emblems was an especial favourite; and besides the Elizabethan dramatists and standard English books, he had read all the works of Voltaire. Byron was his first master in poetry, but about the age of fourteen he fell in accidentally with Shelley and Keats. For Shelley in particular he conceived an enthusiastic admiration which lasted for many years, though it was qualified in his later life.