Writings of Robert Browning During the Victorian Era

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The Victorian time period started in 1837 when Queen Victoria took the throne. The people living in England that were ruled by Queen Victoria at the time, were called “Victorians”, this congregation of people were also said to be very “stuffy, prudish, hypocritical and narrow minded” (Everett). During this time period, if you were at the nobles rank you were the very best you could be and everyone wanted to be at that rank. Even the literature during this time had a lot to do with social improvement (Everett). Although Robert Browning was technically a “Victoria poet” he did not go along with the “typical Victorian style” that everyone from this time period was used to, Robert Browning had a very different style that included violence and many different dramatic verses (faculty.unlv.edu). In 1812 on May 7th, Robert Browning was born (The comp. Poetical works of Browning) . He was born in the Parish of St. Giles in Camberwell, London to a middle-class family Browning was the oldest of three children. Browning`s family consisted of a boy and two girls. Browning`s younger sister, Clara, died during childbirth, while his other sister, Sarianna, outlived him. Robert Browning and his family were always very close, and he was also taught many good values from his father, who conducted most of his education and is said to be why his writings were so strange (The Comp. Poetical works of Browning). When browning was twelve years old he wrote his first small piece of poetry which was quite good for a young man or even women at his age, but as advanced as his talents were, Robert Browning did no writing in between the ages of thirteen and twenty (Knipp). When Browning was also at the age of twelve he wrote a whole volume of Byronic v... ... middle of paper ... ...t seemed they started to see his geniusness in their reviews. For many of Browings fans and himself, poetry did not need to be a big extravagent piece of work, and for he critics who did not understand that aspect, Browning`s work would always “lacking something”. Although there was not understanding of that, there was still a light at the end of the tunnel for Browning in the respect of being appreciated by later critics. Of course, not all of Browning`s poetry reviews were pesimistic, and one literary scholar, William DeVane, considered the poet`s name to have increased as he had gotten older, along with the number of positive reviews. Although Browning was obviously not happy by the many negative reviews he received, but even some of the most brutal reviewers acknowledged his flat out raw talent, even if they did not agree with how he went about using it.

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