A Few Reminiscences of Robert Browning*

* Hiram Corson (1828–1911), Professor of English Literature at Cornell University, was the founder, in 1877, of the first known Browning club. As the leading nineteenth-century American Browningite, he helped lay plans for the founding of the London Browning Society in 1881 and visited Browning at regular intervals during the 1880's. The following article first appeared in the Cornell Era, 40 (April 1908), 295–303, and (May 1908), 358–65. I have silently corrected a few minor errors but have let stand Corson's inaccurate account of how Mrs. Browning disclosed to her husband the existence of the Sonnets from the Portuguese. It is now believed that the scene described by Corson took place in Lucca in 1849 rather than in Pisa in 1847. For two recent accounts of Corson and Browning, see the article by his granddaughter, Pauline Corson Coad, “Hiram Corson's Friendship with Browning,” Georgia Review, 6 (1952), 411–18, and William S. Peterson, Interrogating the Oracle: A History of the London Browning Society (Athens: Ohio Univ. Press, 1969), pp. 91–96. [Editor.]