Dramatic Romances

The Dramatic Romances, . . . enriched by some of the poems originally printed in Men and Women, and a few from Dramatic Lyrics as first printed, include some of Browning's finest and most characteristic work. In several of them the poet displays his familiarity with the life and spirit of the Renaissance--a period portrayed by him with a fidelity more real than history--for he enters into the feelings that give rise to action, while the historian is busied only with the results growing out of the moving force of feeling. Many of the original titles given by Browning to the poems in this collection, as with its predecessor Dramatic Lyrics, are different from the ones he later gave them in various editions of his collected works. Since this book was originally self-published in a very small edition, these poems really only came to prominence in the later collections.