This is an edition of the first third of Browning's 21,000-line masterpiece The Ring and the Book, a poem which Henry James called a "monstrous magnificence." The editors throw new light on how the poet wrote this Italian murder story and give all the background annotation needed to understand it.

Volume VIII of the Poetical Works of Browning is the second of three volumes of Browning's masterpiece, The Ring and the Book. The commentary, at the bottom of each page, elucidates Browning's creative and sometimes challenging use of language with reference to his correspondence, his historical sources, and his own rich experience of Italy. Previously unidentified allusions are fully explained, and a newly discovered source from a seventeenth-century Italian chronicle is presented for the first time, allowing further insight into Browning's engagement with history.

Hawlin and Burnett present the final volume in this three volume Oxford edition of Browning's great murder-story, The Ring and the Book. The commentary in this edition contains a wealth of new contextual material that illuminates Browning's work in sometimes surprising ways. The copy text of 1888-9, the final edition of Browning's lifetime, has been scrupulously examined, both in relation to compositors' errors, and Browning's own final corrections to the text.