Robert Browning Biography

Poet

Robert Browning began publishing poems in the 1830s, attracting some notice but not much financial success. Moved by the poems of Elizabeth Barrett, he met her and they began a romance, marrying secretly in 1846. They moved to Italy, where they lived until her death. In 1861 Browning returned to England and published some of his best-known work. Known for his dramatic monologues, Browning is considered one of the most influential and important poets of his time. After his death in 1889 he was given the honor of burial in Westminster Abbey. His poems include Pippa Passes, The Ring and the Book and How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix. His larger collections include Bells and Pomegranates (1841-6) and Men and Women (1855).

Extra credit: Browning's famous poem about the Pied Piper of Hamelin was first published in 1842.

Other 19th-century English poets: Percy Bysshe Shelley, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Edward Lear... Others buried in Westminster Abbey include science whiz Sir Isaac Newton and explorer David Livingstone...