"THE SUMMATION OF HIS CAREER": ROBERT BROWNING'S PARLEYINGS WITH CERTAIN PEOPLE, 1887 FIRST EDITION

BROWNING, Robert. Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in Their Day. London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1887. Octavo, original russet cloth, largely unopened. $500.

First edition of Browning's last long poem, a "tour de force" and "the boldest work of Browning's later career."

"Browning apparently began his next poem when he was 73. He worked on it for several years and wanted it to be the summation of his career, so he found the writing difficult. Aiming at a kind of intellectual autobiography told in a conversational style, he designed it to be of epic, encyclopedic scope. Parleyings with Certain People (1887) was modelled both on Faust and The Divine Comedy… Each 'parleying' deals with the appearance of a ghost from the past and its stimulation of a current thought or attitude to be argued with. This means that there are three points of view to be considered: those of the speaker, the figure from the past, and a contemporary. Further, each parleying poses two basic questions: is life good or bad? and what makes it tolerable? Among the contemporaries treated are Carlyle, Lady Ashburton, Rossetti, William Morris, Swinburne, Disraeli, critics of Pen Browning's art, and contemporary poets (like Tennyson, Arnold, Swinburne, Morris, and possibly Shelley) who adopt Greek models and attempt to write in a Greek style. Both in its philosophical complexity and daring design, the Parleyings is the boldest work of Browning's later career. Ranging from classical Greece through the middle ages and the Enlightenment to the later 19th century, it deals with the evolution of man's art, thought, morals, and religion" (ODNB). "That hard-worked term a tour de force is undoubtedly the aptest description of Parleyings as a whole. If the purer inspiration of earlier years was lacking, there was none the less a gusto and enthusiasm behind the intellectual debates which went some considerable way to make up for it" (Thomas, Robert Browning, 282). Bookplate.

A very nearly fine copy.