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Critical Introduction

  • Jennifer McDonell

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapterResearchpeer-review

Abstract

Go to any major poetry archive and you can hear Robert Browning on an Edison wax cylinder reciting ''How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix." This scratchy recording, made seven months before the poet's death, is one of the oldest by a major poet. It preserves a unique occasion, a dinner party on April 7, 1889 given by the artist Rudolf Lehmann. Colonel Gouraud, Edison's agent in Britain, brought along the newly invented phonograph, into which he invites a reluctant Browning to speak. After reciting a few lines of his poem he forgets the words then following upon a round of "hip, hip, hooray" from the assembled guests he returns, "shout[ing] his signature, 'Robert Browning' into the machine."
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationRobert Browning: The Complete Poetical Works in Two Volumes
Place of PublicationNewcastle Upon Tyne, United Kingdom
PublisherCambridge Scholars Publishing
Pagesv-xviii
Volume1
Edition1
ISBN (Print)9781443819022, 1443819026
Publication statusPublished - 2012

Publication series

NameClassic Texts
PublisherCambridge Scholars Publishing

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