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Browning's First Letter to Rossetti: A Discovery

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Mark Samuels Lasner
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Extract

In the summer of 1847, the nineteen-year-old Dante Gabriel Rossetti came across a copy of Robert Browning's anonymous first book in the library of the British Museum. This discovery of Pauline (published in 1833) by a young poet already enthusiastic about Browning has long been justly famous. Not being able to obtain the book from the publisher – it had long since been removed from sale – Rossetti was forced to transcribe the entire text into a notebook. While doing so, he noticed a similarity between certain passages of Pauline and one of Browning's acknowledged early works, Paracelsus (1835). Several months later, on 17 October 1847, Rossetti wrote to Browning to ask if he were the author of Pauline. Browning's reply – the beginning of an important literary friendship – is presented here for the first time.

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 15 , Spring 1987 , pp. 79 - 90
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

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References

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