Robert Browning and the Gothic Imagination

The poetry of Robert Browning (1812-89) makes unmistakable use of the tropes of the eighteenth-century Gothic novel, but only in the last few years has there been any interest in the poet’s wider relationship with the genre. Building on recent critical literature, Robert Browning and the Gothic Imagination is the first study systematically to demonstrate Gothic’s importance in Browning’s intellectual formation and development. It shows how a Gothic perspective enables him to explore complex and obscure emotions in his characters, while giving some of his most important poems the narrative propulsion of popular fiction. In doing so, it restores Browning to a place at the heart of nineteenth-century Gothic literature. The book will be of interest to academics and postgraduate students in the fields of Victorian literature and Gothic studies.

Justin Gilbert is an independent researcher and part of the editorial board for The Poems of Robert Browning (Longman Annotated English Poets). He completed his PhD in July 2024 on Robert Browning and the Gothic Imagination.