Browning the Revisionary

In this study John Woolford sets out to challenge the stereotypes of Modernism and Romanticism which are traditionally thought to overshadow the period of transition and uneasy compromise during the 19th century.;He claims that the mid-Victorian period saw a radical experiment in the democratization of poetry, in which readers were to be persuaded to take an active part in the poetic process.

This book is the story of that period of experiment as reflected in the career of one of its greatest poets.;Woolford seeks to change conceptions of Browning himself, who is stil best known as the author of such virtuoso monologues as "My Last Duchess" and "Andrea del Sarto".

He shows that individual poems like these fit together to form larger coherent wholes, which he calls "structured collections", and that the collections in turn form steps in a coherent process of development covering the first thirty years of Browning's career, during which he struggled to achieve a poetic form that would satisfy both himself and his audience.

That process, like this book, ends with the publication of "The Ring and the Book" in 1869.

Woolford explains how it came about that a poem whose form anticipates the relativistic procedures of modernism could become a popular bestseller.

Its success, he argues, was both the climax and the finale of this unique phaze in poetic theory and practice.;John Woolford is the editor (with D.R.Karlin) of "Browning" in the "Annotated English Poets" series and is former editor of "Browning Society Notes".