The best introduction to the entirety of Browning's career. The most significant aspects of life, writing, theme, development, contemporary reception, and 20th-century criticism are presented with great clarity and efficiency. Ryals's mastery of his subject is unrivaled.
Choice. Only a handful of scholars could have written this book, and it is surely now the best introduction to the entirely of Browning's career... Ryals's mastery of his subject is... unrivalled... to be recommended as the best first book to read on Browning. Choice
This biography, more successfully than any that has preceded it, achieves a fine balance between its sensitive commentary on the poet's life and the poet's art, and it further illuminates these subjects by locating them in a rich and wide-ranging cultural and historical context.Nineteenth-Century Literature.
... a thoroughly admirable contribution - an introduction for the general reader, at a modest price, of the corpus fo Browning, described and summarized and commented upon in such a way as to provoke reading of the texts to verify the riches the critic announces he has found John Stasny, Victorian Poetry.
Clyde de L. Ryals has published two distinguished studies of Browning's works, and his knowledge of the field is second to none. ... Eminently readable, Ryal's study covers a huge amount of ground, offeringclear and reliable summaries of the poet's works and days. This kind of book is obviously much more useful to the current generation of students than the earlier handbooks compiled by Alexandra Orr and William. Victorian Studies
