Political views Browning identified as a Liberal, supported the emancipation of women, and opposed slavery, expressing sympathy for the North in the American Civil War. Later in life, he even championed animal rights in several poems attacking vivisection. He was also a stalwart opponent of anti-Semitism, leading to speculation that Browning himself was Jewish. In 1877 he wrote a poem explaining "Why I am a Liberal" in which he declared: "Who then dares hold – emancipated thus / His fellow shall continue bound? Not I." Critical attention to Browning's politics has, in general, been sparse. Isobel Armstrong's writing on dramatic monologues, as well as more recent work on the influence of Coriolanus on Browning's politics, has attempted to situate the poet's political sensibility at the centre of his practice.Isobel Armstrong, Victorian Poetry: Poetry, Poetics and Politics (London and New York: Routledge, 1993); Joseph Hankinson, 'King Multitude: Browning and Coriolanus', Essays in Criticism, vol. 72, iss. 2 (2022), pp. 148–169.
Political views Browning identified as a Liberal, supported the emancipation of women, and opposed slavery, expressing sympathy for the North in the American Civil War. Later in life, he even championed animal rights in several poems attacking vivisection. He was also a stalwart opponent of anti-Semitism, leading to speculation that Browning himself was Jewish. In 1877 he wrote a poem explaining "Why I am a Liberal" in which he declared: "Who then dares hold – emancipated thus / His fellow shall continue bound? Not I." Critical attention to Browning's politics has, in general, been sparse. Isobel Armstrong's writing on dramatic monologues, as well as more recent work on the influence of Coriolanus on Browning's politics, has attempted to situate the poet's political sensibility at the centre of his practice.Isobel Armstrong, Victorian Poetry: Poetry, Poetics and Politics (London and New York: Routledge, 1993); Joseph Hankinson, 'King Multitude: Browning and Coriolanus', Essays in Criticism, vol. 72, iss 2 (2022), pp. 148–169.