The Poetical Works of Robert Browning Volume XV: Parleyings and Asolando

Volume 15 in The Complete Poetical Works of Robert Browning presents poetry Browning wrote in his seventies, his last two volumes: Parleyings (1887) and Asolando (1889). The former is the poet's last sustained meditation on life and on his times, a nine-section credo covering religion,history, poetry, politics, art, and music. Asolando is a coda to his whole oeuvre, a mixture of short love lyrics, historical monologues and anecdotes, light verse, and poems which are quite sui generis, all grouped around the theme of 'fancies and fact'. Both volumes are presented here withpreviously unknown sources, a wealth of new contextual material, and many textual nuances clarified, giving a fresh view of the last phase of Browning's career. What emerges is a poet more seriously Christian, Protestant, and Liberal than previously supposed, more interested in Britain's destiny andEmpire, more enmeshed in the local battles of the 1880s?and a writer of considerable range and wit.

Michael Meredith is one of the foremost authorities on Robert Browning and his work. Stefan Hawlin is well known for this critical writings on nineteenth- and twentieth-century poetry, and for his work on previous volumes of the OET edition.