The Complete Works of Robert Browning with Variant Readings and Annotations, Volume XVII — 2012 ·

Volume XVII

By Robert Browning
Edited by Ashby Bland Crowder and Allan C. Dooley

“Of the three most useful editions of Browning’s poetry, the present set (begun in 1969) is the only one to include all of Browning’s poetry, plays, and prose…. The present volume (Volume XVII) marks the end of an important scholarly project. A must for researchers interested in Browning and in the history of textual theory and criticism.”

Choice

With this seventeenth and final volume, The Complete Works of Robert Browning concludes the major phase of a great scholarly project: the accurate preservation and transmission of the poet’s works for future generations of readers. Volume XVII begins with Browning’s last collection of poems, Asolando: Fancies and Facts, published on the day of the poet’s death, 12 December 1889. Wonderful in its diversity and intensity, Asolando contains lyrics of startling emotion, autobiographical narratives, and a few of the dramatic monologues for which Browning had become famed.

Also in this final volume are ninety-nine fugitive pieces, either unpublished or uncollected during the poet’s lifetime. Ranging from experimental poems of Browning’s youth to Greek translations to joking couplets and witty ephemera, these works illustrate the endless variety of the poet’s talent.

Finally, Volume XVII includes “Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford,” a biographical essay that Browning coauthored with John Forster in 1836. The historical research done for this work formed a basis for Strafford, a play Browning completed the following year.

Comprehensive explanatory notes for the works in this volume are provided, as is a title index to all seventeen volumes of The Complete Works.

Ashby Bland Crowder is Peace Professor Emeritus of English, American Literature, and the Humanities at Hendrix College. He is the author of the prize-winning Wakeful Anguish: A Literary Biography of William Humphrey and editor of Far from Home: Selected Letters of William Humphrey. With Jason David Hall, he edited Seamus Heaney: Poet, Critic, Translator.

Allan Dooley is general editor of The Complete Works of Robert Browning and is professor emeritus at Kent State University.