My Last Duchess and Other Poems

"Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be, the last of life for which the first was made" Browning is the poet of the dramatic monologue, the story told through the voice of a principal speaker, often an ironical one. Browning is an intellectual and moral poet whose work has a kind of toughness and strength. The poems in this small collection are among his most memorable and anthologized. An excellent collection for coming to know one of the major Victorian English poets.

Robert Browning is a treat, especially to read out loud. This book includes "My Last Duchess," of course, and some great poems like "The Bishop Ordering His Tomb" and "Fra Lippo Lippi." I like to think of Robert Browning as the first poet of the twentieth century since he really can't be put in a box with Tennyson or other popular poets of his own time. Also, he had a big influence on Ezra Pound who, in turn, had a big influence on many popular poets today. Dover Thrift Editions are surprisingly well-constructed - they'll outlast, say, your Oxford World Classics paperbacks - and the poetry is usually very well selected. Oh...and they're cheap!

I have started to read a bit on Browning and decided to get an idea of his poetry. Given the price of this book, this was a good choice.Browning covered a lot of ideas, and all are written very intelligently. Reading through this book though, may cause you to scratch your head. If you read it, enjoy each selection rather than try to read straight through.This is what I mean by the arrangement; I poem on the killing of a loved one (Porphyria's Lover) precedes the Pied Piper of Hamelin. The jump in ideas can slow you down a bit. The arrangement is logical in that the editors printed the poems in groups according to the collection they were originally published in. These collections, in turn, are arranged in chronological order. This is good because you can watch Browning's work as time progresses.There are 42 poems in this selection. It does include the great ones (I will abbreviate titles) like Andrea del Sarto, Caliban upon Setebos, Karshish, Childe Roland, My Last Duchess, Fra Lippo Lippi, The Bishop Orders His Tomb, Johannes Agricola, and others.I would recommend this book for reflecting on the occasional work of a great poet.

Robert Browning's poetyr is more difficult than his contmeporaries, arnold and tennyson (the lower-cases are intentional) and much better. Reading "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" makes one wonder why Kafka was so uplifting, yet the same poet also writes such charming verse for shildren as "The Pied Piper of Hamlin". A marvelous book!