2 Robert Browning first editions are documented on this shelf, from Men and Women (1855) to The Ring and the Book (1868) across 2 different publishers. Each linked guide gives the points of issue that separate a true first printing of that Robert Browning title from later printings and book-club copies — the publisher and year to expect, the number-line or edition-statement conventions, and the tells that show up in online listings.

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Men and Women — 1855 · Chapman and HallFirst edition in two volumes, octavo, collating iv, 260pp (volume I) and iv, 241, [1]pp (volume II), gathering fifty-one poems including "Fra Lippo Lippi," "Andrea del Sarto," and "Love Among the Ruins." Volume II carries two pages of publisher's advertisements at the end. Bound in the publisher's original olive-green cloth stamped in blind, with gilt lettering and decoration on the spines; the title page imprint…. Men and Women was later absorbed into Browning's collected Poetical Works and its individual poems redistributed among other volumes during his lifetime; a two-volume set under this title with the Chapman and Hall imprint is required for the true first edition.
The Ring and the Book — 1868 · Smith, Elder and Co.First edition in four volumes issued serially, collating approximately [iv], 245, [1]pp; [iv], 251pp; [iv], 249pp; and [iv], 235pp. First issue is distinguished by inconsistent spine numbering: volumes I and III are numbered in roman type and volumes II and IV in arabic type on the spines. Bound in the publisher's green beveled cloth, blind- and gilt-stamped, with gilt-lettered spines. Issued in four separate volumes over several months, the first two in November-December 1868 and the last two in early 1869; a complete first-edition set must comprise all four volumes with matching first-issue points, since some volumes were reprinted before all four had appeared. One-volume collected reprints of The Ring and the Book, increasingly common from later in the nineteenth century onward, are not the four-volume first edition and lack the roman/arabic spine-numbering point.

More Poetry, Beat & Drama shelves: Robert Hass, Sam Shepard, Samuel Beckett, Seamus Heaney, Suzan-Lori Parks, Sylvia Plath.

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