Beyond the Brownings–Victor Hugo (1802-1885)

Posted on October 7, 2014 by melindacreech

Courtesy of the Armstrong Browning Library

By Melinda Creech, Graduate Assistant, Armstrong Browning Library

Victor Hugo, a French poet, novelist, and dramatist of the Romantic movement, is considered one of the greatest and most recognized French writers. His best-known works are the acclaimed novels Les Misérables (1862) and Notre-Dame de Paris (1831), known in English as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.

Hugo’s works at the Armstrong Browning Library include one letter and seven books, one of them rare.

Victor Hugo. Thèatre De Victor Hugo. Paris: Charpentier, Libraire-Editeur, 1844.

This volume is a first edition.

Letter from Victor Hugo to Monsieur de Fiennes. No date.

Monsieur de Fiennes may have been an advocate at Bruxelles and later appointed Minister of Finances of France in 1840.

Letter from Frederick Tennyson to Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 29 September 1860.

The brother of Alfred Lord Tennyson spent most of his life in Italy and Jersey, a small island off the coast of Normandy. But, for twenty years he lived in Florence, where he was a friend of Robert and Elizabeth Browning. In this letter, written while in Jersey to Elizabeth Barrett Browning in Siena, Italy, Frederick Tennyson, mentions that:

We have had Victor Hugo here this summer he came to attend a Garibaldi meeting and made a grand oration. He seems still to be in great vigour & though I could see his face but imperfectly from the opposite side of the room his voice is clear & lion-like–

Beyond the Brownings–Michael Faraday (1791-1867)

Posted on October 5, 2014 by melindacreech

© National Portrait Gallery, London

By Melinda Creech, Graduate Assistant, Armstrong Browning Library

Michael Faraday, an English scientist who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry, was one of the most influential scientists in history, leading to the practical use for electricity in technology. The Armstrong Browning Library owns one rare edition book.

In a letter of 23 August [1853] to Anna Jameson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning makes this comment about Faraday:

For as to Faraday, … I dont know what you conclude upon Faraday .. but for me, I am sorry not to be able to do more reverence to the name & authority of a man of science such as he. His letter meets none of the important phenomena, .. ignores facts altogether .. & has a tone of insolence & arrogance which sets the blood burning in me—what do you think: how do you feel? It seems to me from what you say that you have witnessed or had testimony upon only the inferior phenomena, and I have been long aware that these may be simulated involuntarily by the muscular hypothesis, & that many of the amateur operators have exercised their muscles simply. Therefore you may be convinced by the Faraday letter as some other persons have been. But if you were in the possession of certain facts, which, as I know them, Faraday ought to have known, before he gave an opinion on the subject .. such facts for instance as the movement of tables without a touch from finger or foot .. you would feel, as I cant help doing, considerable indignation at the treatment of the subject in this famous letter.

This letter, part of Wellesley College Special Collections, and also in The Browning Letters digital collection through the Baylor-Wellesley collaboration, refers to Michael Faraday’s letter on table-moving, published in The Athenaeum, 2 July 1853.

Michael Faraday, “Professor Faraday on Table-Moving,” The Athenaeum, 2 July 1853.

Michael Faraday. Chemical Manipulation; Being Instructions to Students in Chemistry, on the Methods of Performing Experiments of Demonstration or of Research, with Accuracy and Success. London: W. Phillips, 1827.

This is a rare first edition of Faraday’s only monograph, a work on experimental method.

…from America: The Brownings’ American Correspondents–Katharine DeKay Bronson

Posted on April 28, 2014 by melindacreech

Katharine de Kay Bronson was a wealthy American who frequently traveled with her husband Arthur Bronson around Europe. In 1875, the couple and their daughter Edith (born 1861) decided to make Venice, Italy, their permanent home. Katharine Bronson entertained guests in her house, called Ca Alvisi, on the Grand Canal and became acquainted with a group of English-speaking artists and writers, among them Henry James and Robert Browning. Bronson was first introduced to Browning in 1880 probably by their mutual friend the American sculptor William Wetmore Story. Bronson and Browning developed a close friendship, and he and his sister Sarianna spent many holidays with Bronson in Venice and in Asolo. Browning’s Ferishtah’s Fancies, completed in 1884, is thought to be influenced in part by Bronson and Venice, and in 1889, Browning dedicated Asolando to Bronson. The dedication reads:

To whom but you, dear Friend, should I dedicate verses—some few written, all of them supervised, in the comfort of your presence, and with yet another experience of the gracious hospitality now bestowed on me since so many a year,—adding a charm even to my residences at Venice, and leaving me little regret for the surprise and delight at my visits to Asolo in bygone days?

Personal Letters from Robert Browning in the Collection of Katharine de Kay Bronson and Edith Rucelai Bronson.

This scrapbook was created by Katharine Bronson after Robert Browning’s death and contains photographs of Robert Browning as well as his letters to her.

Letter from Robert Browning to Katharine DeKay Bronson, 16 September 884

In a letter from Robert Browning to Mrs. Bronson, dated 16 September 1884, Robert Browning reminisces about the warm greeting he and his sister Sarianna received from Mrs. Bronson when they arrived in Italy for a holiday in 1883:

So it was last year, and the end of the journey was at the Venice Station when the first blessing was that of Luigi’s fat face—lighting the way a few footsteps farther to the more than Friend who had come in the rain to take us and keep us.

The Armstrong Browning Library’s holdings related to Katharine DeKay Bronson include one manuscript and eighty-seven letters.

Armstrong Browning Library & Museum

A blog that explores the work of Robert & Elizabeth Browning and 19th-century Victorian literature and culture

Tag Archives: Elizabeth Barret Browning

Beyond the Brownings–Victor Hugo (1802-1885)

Beyond the Brownings–Michael Faraday (1791-1867)

…from America: The Brownings’ American Correspondents–Katharine DeKay Bronson