12-13-39 GV. odd. ed.

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.

(Prefixed to the three-volume edition issued in 1863.)

I DEDICATE THESE VOLUMES TO MY OLD FRIEND JOHN FORSTER, GLAD AND GRATEFUL THAT HE WHO, FROM THE FIRST PUBLICATION OF THE VARIOUS POEMS THEY INCLUDE, HAS BEEN THEIR PROMPTEST AND STAUNCHEST HELPER, SHOULD SEEM EVEN NEARER TO ME NOW THAN ALMOST THIRTY YEARS AGO.

London, April 21, 1863.

R. B.