The Complete Works of Robert Browning, Volume X

In seventeen volumes, copublished with Baylor University, this acclaimed series features annotated texts of all of Robert Brownings known writing. The series encompasses autobiography as well as influences bearing on Brownings life and career and aspects of Victorian thought and culture. The Complete Works of Robert Browning, Volume X contains critical editions of Balaustions Adventure: Including a Transcript from Euripides and Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Saviour of Society. Both published in 1871, these two long poems take up a pair of subjects that held enduring fascination for Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning: classical Greek literature and the career of Napoleon III, Emperor of France. Balaustions Adventure, which the poet characterized as merely a May-month amusement, was surprisingly successful with the reading public that paid more attention to Browning after the triumph of The Ring and the Book in 186869. His first poem since the publication of that masterpiece, Balaustions Adventure creates a charming and brave narrator who recalls in vivid detail a performance of Euripides play Alcestis. Browning began a poem on Louis Napoleon in 1860, but not until after the fall of the Second Empire in 1870 did he attempt a full-scale portrait of the French emperor. As an exercise in self-justification, Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau falls into a familiar sub-genre of Brownings dramatic monologues. The most intriguing aspect of the poem lies in its biographical importance: the character and career of Napoleon III was a topic of sustained, sharp disagreement between Robert and Elizabeth Browning. As always in this acclaimed series, a complete record of textual variants is provided, as well as extensive explanatory notes.