Men and Women
Robert Browning published these fifty-one poems in 1855, at the height of his powers and to reviews that mostly missed the point. The book is built on the dramatic monologue, the form he made his own: a speaker talks, the reader listens, and what the speaker tries to hide leaks out between the lines. Renaissance painters argue with their own consciences in “Fra Lippo Lippi” and “Andrea del Sarto,” while lovers, priests, and musicians take their turns elsewhere, scattered across centuries and across Europe. Only at the end, in “One Word More,” does Browning drop the masks and speak in his own voice, to his wife Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Victorian readers were baffled by all of it. Later ones decided it was one of the century’s great books. Read it free here in PDF and EPUB.
