The Poems of Browning is the first collected edition to be based on the earliest printed texts, and to present these texts in order of their composition.Together, volumes I and II provide an authoritative and accessible tribute to this great poet.
Volume I, 1826-1840 traces Browning's career up to the writing of Sordello. It includes his only surviving juvenilia: The Dance of Death and The First-Borm of Egypt; Pauline, his first anonymous publication, and Paracelsus, the poem which made his literary reputation.

"The Dance of Death"; "The First-born of Egypt"; "Pauline" a fragment of a confession; impromptu on hearing a sermon by the Rev. T.R-- pronounced "heavy"; Cockney anthology - a specimen; on Andrea del Sarto's "Jupiter and Leda"; on the deleterious effects of tea (classicality applied to tea-dealing); Sonnet ("Eyes Calm Beside Thee"); "Pareacelsus"; the King; Porphyria (Porphyria's lover); Johannes Agricola (Johannes Agricola in meditation); lines ("still ailing, wind"); (epitaph for James Dow and his family); a forest thought; cavalier tunes - marching along; give a rouse; my wife Gertrude (boot and saddle); Sordello; Rudel and the Lady of Tripoli; Cristina. Appendix: MS transcriptions of "The Dance of Death" and "The First-Born of Egypt".

Daniel Karlin is Winterstoke Professor of English Literature at the University of Bristol.

John Woolford is Professor Emeritus of nineteenth-century literature and culture at the University of Manchester and Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Sheffield.