Although the early part of Robert Browning’s creative life was spent in comparative obscurity, he has come to be regarded as one of the most important poets of the Victorian period. His dramatic monologues and the psycho-historical epic The Ring and the Book (1868-1869), a novel in verse, have established him as a major figure in the history of English poetry. His claim to attention as a children’s writer is more modest, resting as it does almost entirely on one poem, “The Pied Piper of Hamelin,” included almost as an afterthought in Bells and Pomegranites. No. III.—Dramatic Lyrics (1842) and evidently never highly regarded by its creator. Nevertheless, “The Pied Piper” moved quickly into the canon of children’s literature, where it has remained ever since, receiving the dubious honor (shared by the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen and J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, 1911) of appearing almost as frequently in “adapted” versions as in the author’s original.
Browning was born on 7 May 1812 in Camberwell, a middle-class suburb of London; he was the only son of Robert Browning, a clerk in the Bank of England, and a devoutly religious German-Scotch mother, Sarah Anna Wiedemann Browning. He had a sister, Sarianna, who like her parents was devoted to her poet brother. While Mrs. Browning’s piety and love of music are frequently cited as important influences on the poet’s development, his father’s scholarly interests and unusual educational practices may have been equally significant, particularly in regard to Browning’s great children’s poem. The son of a wealthy banker, Robert Browning the elder had been sent in his youth to make his fortune in the West Indies, but he found the slave economy there so distasteful that he returned, hoping for a career in art and scholarship. A quarrel with his father and the financial necessity it entailed led the elder Browning to relinquish his dreams so as to support himself and his family through his bank clerkship.
Browning’s father amassed a personal library of some six thousand volumes, many of them collections of arcane lore and historical anecdotes that the poet plundered for poetic material, including the source of “The Pied Piper.” The younger Browning recalled his father’s unorthodox methods of education in his late poem “Development,” published in Asolando: Fancies and Facts (1889). Browning remembers at the age of five asking what his father was reading. To explain the siege of Troy, the elder Browning created a game for the child in which the family pets were assigned roles and furniture was recruited to serve for the besieged city. Later, when the child had incorporated the game into his play with his friends, his father introduced him to Alexander Pope’s translation of the Iliad. Browning’s appetite for the story having been whetted, he was induced to learn Greek so as to read the original.
‘A dime a dozen’ as known in America, is perhaps equal to the English ‘cheap as chips’ but whatever the lingua franca of your choice in this series we hereby submit ‘A Rhyme a Dozen’ as 12 poems on many given subjects that are a well-rounded gathering, maybe even an essential guide, from the knowing pens of classic poets and their beautifully spoken verse to the comfort of your ears.
1 - A Rhyme A Dozen - 12 Poems, 12 Poets, 1 Topic - Autumn - An Introduction
2 - The Name of it is Autumn by Emily Dickinson
3 - Autumn by Khalil Gibran
4 - In Autumn Moonlight by Robert Seymour Bridges
5 - The Autumn by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
6 - Autumn in the Garden by Fredegond Shove
7 - An Autumn Rain Scene by Thomas Hardy
8 - Love in Autumn by Sara Teasdale
9 - Autumn in Cornwall by Algernon Charles Swinburne
10 - To Autumn by William Blake
11 - Autumn Dawn by Charles Sorley
12 - Autumn Elegy by Leslie Norris
13 - Autumn - A Dirge by Percy Bysshe Shelley
A spiritual and uplifting collection of poems, from the New York Times bestselling poet and peacemaker Mattie J. T.Stepanek. Mattie J.T.Stepanek is an award-winning poet whose struggle with a rare form of muscular dystrophy has touched the lives of people nationwide. Celebrate through Heartsongs, his third audio program, contains inspiring poems written between the ages of three and eleven, and continues to spread Mattie's message of universal hope, peace, courage, and love. Hearing Mattie's own voice adds to the appeal this program will have for people of all ages, religions, and beliefs.
An urgent exposé of the realities behind the international call centre.
Your credit card is maxed out, and you hang up the phone on Ross chasing your payments. But Ross is actually Roshan and though the sun is shining for you it's past midnight in his window-less call centre. With a new accent and invented back story, bright young graduates in India are renamed and rebranded as they work to claw back the cash spent by Americans crippled by debt.
'a minor marvel... Disconnect is the Glengarry Glen Ross of our day. It raises profound questions of identity and refers to an even darker world than that of Mamet's play, but with added brio and lightness of touch' - Independent
'gives us an insider's portrait of modern India and a fresh, poignant meaning to the insidious idea of the American dream' - Guardian
'exciting and poignant, Disconnect keeps its audiences hooked throughout' - Daily Telegraph
Frustrated by working under lockdown and worried that the 2020 festival might not happen, Arachne Press decided to continue as though everything would be alright, and asked writers to something that responded or reacted to or was inspired by a sixteenth century poem that editor Cherry Potts has always found comforting in a crisis: Robert Southwell's Tymes Goe by Turnes; or that responded or reacted to or was inspired by some concept in it. The poem observes the ebb and flow of fortune, nothing stays bad for ever, nor anything good - so get on with it while you can. And they have. Oh, they have. This isn't exactly a response to Covid-19, but there's an echo there - in Katie Margaret Hall's epic train journey, New Orleans To Vancouver, and Jackie Taylor's Rewilding; but there is also concern for the environment, and relationships and lives in need of nourishment they are finding hard to find. As with Southwell's poem there is a fine balance between dread and hope. stories and poems from:
Brooke Stanicki
C.L. Hearnden
Claire Booker
Elinor Brooks
Jackie Taylor
Jane Aldous
Jane McLaughlin
Julian Bishop
Karen Ankers
Katie Hall
Keely O'Shaughnessy
Kelly Davis
Laila Sumpton
Linda McMullen
Lynn White
Margaret Crompton
Neil Lawrence
Patience Mackarness
Pippa Gladhill
S. B. Merrow
Sean Carney
A collection of prose and poetry written principally in the 18th Century. These works of world literature are written in the English language or are in English translation. (Summary by Alan Davis Drake)
NOTE: Poem 35, “Hills of Home,” was written around 1922 and is therefore not an 18th Century poem.