English poet, noted for his mastery of dramatic monologue. Browning was long unsuccessful as a poet and financially dependent upon his family until he was well into adulthood. He became a great Victorian poet, in his best works people from the past reveal their thoughts and lives as if speaking or thinking aloud. Robert Browning was born in London as the son of Robert Browning, a wealthy clerk in the Bank of England. In his teens, Browning discovered Shelley, adopting the author's confessionalism in poetry.

His first poems Browning wrote under the influence of Shelley, who also inspired him to adopt atheist principles for a time. From 1837 to 1846 Browning attempted to write verse drama for the stage. During these years he met Carlyle, Dickens, and Tennyson, and formed several important friendships. In 1846 Browning married the poet Elizabeth Barrett (1806-1861), and settled with her in Florence.

He wrote his greatest work, The Ring and the Book (1869), based on the proceedings in a murder trial in Rome in 1698. Browning made poetry compete with prose, and used idioms of ordinary speech in his text. A typical Browning poem tells of a key moment in tye life of a prince, priest or painter of the Italian Renaissance. He often crammed his meaning into so few words that many readers could not grasp what he meant.