Robert Browning is customarily regarded as a dramatic poet whose works are separate and distinct from himself. This biography proposes a different view of the poet and his poems. Every one of his works is regarded in the same way that Browning himself regarded it; as a performance in which the author plays a part, as producer, presenter, or actor, or sometimes all three; and each is examined as part of a constantly revised script entitled Presenting Robert Browning . To Browning life is more than art, but art is teh best way of dealing with what life is all about.

The author is Professor of English at Duke University. He has written many books on Victorian literature, including Browning's Later Poetry 1871-1889 (1975), Becoming Browning: The Poems and Plays of Robert Browning 1833-1846 (1983), and A World of Possibilities: (Romantic Irony in Victorian Literature (1900). He is editor of The Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Walsh Carlyle (1970- ).