Robert Browning

At five, Robert Browning learned the siege of Troy with chairs and tables for the city, a cat for Helen, and two dogs for the Greek kings. His father turned Homer into a game—and made the boy’s home a place where stories came alive.

Edward Dowden follows Browning from his childhood in nineteenth-century Camberwell into the making of a poet whose inner life matters as much as the events of his life. In a family rich in books, music, faith, and affection, the energetic, quick-tempered boy read widely and began to find his own voice. But Browning’s poems would grow intricate and difficult to decipher, while his belief in life’s deeper possibilities stood against the materialism of his age. What shaped the mind that could look into human motives so deeply—and still meet the world with hope?

With centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world.

Who are we? We're Cairn Press. Our background is in design, publishing, typography, and technology. These skills fuel our mission to create the highest quality Public Domain eBooks available online, at an affordable price. We give them the treatment they deserve; our proprietary process restores books for a better overall user experience in design, readability, and e-reader compatibility.