Description

If 'Sordello' is a book-length poem, then 'The Ring and the Book'-in its day regarded as Browning's greatest achievement, but today seemingly out of fashion-is something different. It is in fact a great novel, but one presented in blank verse, almost 21,000 lines of it, and in twelve books, each representing a different view of the action (a court case involving adultery and murder) by one of the protagonists. Why it has been called an "epic poem" is a puzzle; it is epic only in length; it is a poem only because it is in verse. Pushkin's 'Yevgeny Onegin' is everywhere regarded as a novel, although it is in verse. 'The Ring and the Book' is the greatest of all English verse novels; it is one of the great English novels of the 19th century; it is a remarkably modern novel in terms of narrative technique; it is, by any standard, s a great work of English Literature. It is offered by Shearsman in the author's bicentenary year, as it simply should not be out of print....