"Madhouse Cells, Part II" ["Porphyria's Lover"]
By Robert Browning

Transcription, correction, editorial commentary, and markup by Students and Staff at the University of Virginia, Tonya Howe

Sources

London : Edward Moxon, Dover Street, 1842"Porphyria's Lover" was first printed in the January 1836 issue of the magazine Monthly Repository, under the title "Porphyria," and was later also published in the third volume ("Dramatic Lyrics") of Bells and Pomegranates, an 8-part self-published collection, under the title "Madhouse Cells." In this version, "Porphyria's Lover" is the second of two paired poems, which together form "Madhouse Cells." "Porphyria's Lover" is the second, and the first is "Johannes Agricola in Meditation," a dramatic soliloquy in which Agricola explains his antinomionism, an extreme form of Calvinism in which true believers can do no wrong. It is an interesting poem to pair with "Porphyria's Lover," as Browning's perspective on Agricola's beliefs is unsympathetic. Like "My Last Duchess," "Porphyria's Lover" is a dramatic monologue, a form of great interest to Browning. Exploring the speaker's pathology through his recounting of the murder of his lover, Porphyria, this is perhaps the most shocking of Browning's poems, and its themes of violence and sexuality offer an unexpected study of human nature that many critics read as a response to the ideals of Romanticism. This digital edition takes its text from the 1842 printing. Page images, provided courtesy of Special Collections, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, show both parts of the two-part "Madhouse Cells," but our text retains only part II, "Porphyria's Lover." Interested readers can explore "Johannes Agricola in Meditation" in the accompanying page image.

Editorial Statements

Research informing these annotations draws on publicly-accessible resources, with links provided where possible. Annotations have also included common knowledge, defined as information that can be found in multiple reliable sources. If you notice an error in these annotations, please contact lic.open.anthology@gmail.com.

Original spelling and capitalization is retained, though the long s has been silently modernized and ligatured forms are not encoded.

Hyphenation has not been retained, except where necessary for the sense of the word.

Page breaks have been retained. Catchwords, signatures, and running headers have not.

Materials have been transcribed from and checked against first editions, where possible. See the Sources section for more information.

Citation

Browning, Robert. "Madhouse Cells" ["Porphyria's Lover"]. Bells and Pomegranates. No. III. Dramatic Lyrics, Edward Moxon, Dover Street, 1842 , No. 3, p 13 . Literature in Context: An Open Anthology. http://anthologydev.lib.virginia.edu/work/Browning/browning-porphyria. Accessed: 2025-03-11T07:24:14.01Z