Robert Browning: How to Know Him
1842
William Lyon Phelps undertook the ambitious task of rendering Robert Browning legible to early 20th-century readers, and what emerges is less a conventional biography than an act of critical advocacy. Drawing on Browning's letters, personal acquaintances, and the poet's own Prefaces, Phelps constructs a portrait of the artist as a man whose intellectual freedom and emotional intensity were forged in unusually fortunate circumstances. The study traces Browning's development from the autodidact who devoured Greek and Italian literature in his father's library to the creator of dramatic monologues that plumbing the psychological depths other Victorians dared not approach. Phelps is particularly invested in the relationship between Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, casting their romance as the crucible in which the poet's mature voice crystallized. The book operates on a now-unfashionable premise: that to know the poems, you must first know the man. Whether one agrees with that thesis or not, Phelps writes with genuine admiration that makes even Victorian earnestness feel alive.
