My Last Duchess and Other Poems

The Victorian poet Robert Browning (1812 -1889) is perhaps most admired today for his inspired development of the dramatic monologue. In this compelling poetic form, he sought to reveal his subjects' true natures in their own, often self-justifying, accounts of their lives and affairs. A number of these vivid monologues, including the famed Fra Lippo Lippi, How It Strikes a Contemporary, and The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church, are included in this selection of forty-two poems.
Here, too, are the famous My Last Duchess, dramatic lyrics such as Memorabilia and Love among the Ruins, and well-known shorter works: The Pied Piper of Hamelin, Home-Thoughts, from Abroad, Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister, and more. Together these poems reveal Browning's rare gifts as both a lyric poet and a monologist of rare psychological insight and dramatic flair.