Robert Browning was a poet.
Browning Society . Emerging from various reading groups , the societies were an indication of the poet 's fame and , unusually , were actively forming during his lifetime . Robert Browning ( 7 May 1812 -- 12 December 1889 ) was an English poet and playwright whose mastery of the dramatic monologue made him one of the foremost Victorian poets . The collection Dramatis Personae and the book-length epic poem The Ring and the Book followed , and made him a leading British poet . Such Browning Societies remained common in Britain and the United States until the early 20th century .