The Cambridge Edition of the Poets
EDITED BY
HORACE E. SCUDDER
BROWNING
BY
THE EDITOR
THE COMPLETE
POETIC AND DRAMATIC WORKS OF
ROBERT BROWNING
Cambridge Edition
Asolo: Browning's Italian Home
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
Copyright, 1895,
By HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.
All rights reserved.
The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A.
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company.
PUBLISHERS' NOTE
The Riverside Edition of the Poetic and Dramatic Works of Robert Browningwas published first in 1887. It included all the writings which the Americanpublishers had from time to time brought out by arrangement with Mr. Browningor his representatives. A year later the English publishers issued a new andrevised edition, whereupon the Riverside Edition was carefully compared with theauthor's latest revision and made to agree with it. There had grown up, moreover,about the writings a considerable body of comment and interpretation, andto facilitate the study and enjoyment of the poems, the American publishers engagedMr. George Willis Cooke to prepare a Guide-Book which served as a verydesirable accompaniment to the Riverside Edition of the works. They added alsoto the series, by arrangement with the English publishers, the authorized Life ofthe poet by Mrs. Sutherland Orr.
The ten volumes thus brought together furnish a complete Browning collection,but it has long been apparent that students and lovers of Browning would findit very convenient to have the complete works of their author in a single portablevolume, and the plan of the Cambridge Edition so successfully applied to thepoems of Longfellow and Whittier was adopted for this purpose. By a carefulstudy of condensation with every regard for legibility it has been found possibleto bring the entire body of Browning's work into a single volume, and to equipthe edition with the requisite apparatus. The order of arrangement is chronological,with one or two obvious divergences. As in the other volumes of theCambridge Edition, a biographical sketch introduces the work, brief head-noteschiefly pertaining to the origin of the respective poems have been supplied, drawnlargely from Mr. Cooke's admirable volume, and a small body of pertinent notes ofan explanatory character added, though the reader will readily see that the exigenciesof the volume have compelled the editor to be very frugal in this respect.The appendix also contains the one notable piece of Browning's prose, a chronologicallist of his writings, and indexes of titles and first lines.
Boston, 4 Park Street, August 1, 1895.