STRAFFORD: SORDELLO: PIPPA PASSES BOSTON AND NEW YORK MARYARD L The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company. PUBLISHERS' ADVERTISEMENT IN issuing a new American edition of Mr. Browning's works the Publishers purpose not only to place before the reader in convenient form the entire body of the poet's writings, but to follow with scrupulous care his latest revision of the text. It is well known that Mr. Browning has taken occasion, in each successive issue of his works, both to redistribute collections of poems and to alter, often materially, the form of many verses. Before the publication of The Ring and the Book, Mr. Browning gathered all of his previous poems and dramas and issued them, rearranged and revised, in a series of six volumes. The present edition follows that series, and continues with the other writings in the order of their first appearance. Dates or the author's memoranda sufficiently indicate the original publication. When issuing the collective edition referred to above, Mr. Browning prefixed the following note: The poems that follow are printed in the order of their publication. The first piece in the series (Pauline), I acknowledge and retain with extreme repugnance, indeed purely of necessity; for not long ago I inspected one, and am certified of the existence of other transcripts, intended sooner or later to be published abroad: by forestalling these, I can at least correct some misprints (no syllable is changed) and introduce a boyish work by an exculpatory word. The thing was my earliest attempt at "poetry always dramatic in principle, and so many utterances of so many imaginary persons, not mine," which I have since written according to a scheme less extravagant and scale less impracticable than were ventured upon in this crude preliminary sketch a sketch that, on reviewal, appears not altogether wide of some hint of the characteristic features of that particular dramatis persona it would fain have reproduced: good draughtsmanship, however, and right handling were far beyond the artist at that time. LONDON, December 25, 1867. R. B. In the final volume of this series will be found Indexes of contents and of first lines. The portrait prefacing the present volume is from a steel-plate executed by J. A. J. Wilcox in 1887 from a recent photograph. POSTSCRIPT. The above advertisement was prefixed to the first edition of this series of volumes in 1887. In the year following, Mr. Browning began the issue of a still later, revised, edition of his poems, and the American publishers accordingly have made the present edition conform to that. So many changes appear in "Pauline," as indicated by Mr. Browning's prefatory note, that it has been deemed of interest to students to print the earlier text, that of 1833 revised in 1865, as an appendix to the present volume; the pages are numbered to correspond with the equivalent pages of the 1888 text, which takes its place as the initial poem. The note which here follows is that prefixed by Mr. Browning to his latest edition. I preserve, in order to supplement it, the foregoing preface. I had thought, when compelled to include in my collected works the poem to which it refers, that the honest course would be to reprint, and leave mere literary errors unaltered. Twenty years' endurance of an eyesore seems more than sufficient: my faults remain duly recorded against me, and I claim permission to somewhat diminish these, so far as style is concerned, in the present and final edition, where "Pauline" must needs, first of my performances, confront the reader. I have simply removed solecisms, mended the metre a little, and endeavored to strengthen the phraseology - experience helping, in some degree, the helplessness of juvenile haste and heat in their untried adventure long ago. The poems that follow are again, as before, printed in chronological order; but only so far as proves compatible with the prescribed size of each volume, which necessitates an occasional change in the distribution of its contents. Every date is subjoined as before. LONDON, February 27, 1888. |