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“THE KING IS COLD,” BY STODDARD, NOT BROWNING

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 September 2008

Andrew M. Stauffer*
Affiliation:
Boston University

Extract

About a decade ago, I discovered an unknown poem attributed to Robert Browning in two New York abolitionist periodicals, and published an article about it here in Victorian Literature and Culture. I made the case that the poem, a dramatic monologue entitled “The King is Cold,” sounds like Browning in ways that suggest either its authenticity or the early familiarity of an American audience with Browning's style; and I closed the article with the statement, “By bringing ‘The King is Cold’ to light, I hope to encourage further speculation and inquiry as to its place either among Browning's collected works, or within the larger field of Browning scholarship that includes the study of his American reputation” (469). Since then, electronic databases have automated broad, sweeping searches of periodicals, and now the relevant information is easily discovered: the poem was in fact written by Richard Henry Stoddard, the American poet and man of letters. It was first published under Browning's name in the New York News sometime late in 1857, and was correctly ascribed to Stoddard in Russell's Magazine in December of that year; I found this information by searching in the American Periodicals Series Online, 1740–1900. The abolitionist reprintings (in the National Anti-Slavery Standard and the Liberator) apparently followed the version in the New York News, and the misattribution was perpetuated. Indeed, the poem reappeared in another New York periodical, Munsey's Scrap Book, in 1909, where it was still being given out as Robert Browning's. “The King is Cold” was also included as Browning's in William Cullen Bryant's oft-reprinted New Library of Poetry and Song.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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References

WORKS CITED

“The King is Cold.” Munsey's Scrap Book 7 (1909): 137.Google Scholar
“The King is Cold.” New Library of Poetry and Song. Ed. Bryant, William Cullen. New York: J. B. Ford, 1876. 805.Google Scholar
“The King is Cold.” Russell's Magazine (Charleston, SC) 2.3 (Dec 1857): 279–80.Google Scholar
Stauffer, Andrew. “Robert Browning and ‘The King is Cold’: A New Poem.” Victorian Literature and Culture 26.2 (1998): 465–73.Google Scholar
Stoddard, Richard H. “The King is Cold.” The Poems of Richard Henry Stoddard. Complete Ed. New York: Scribner's, 1880. 306–07.Google Scholar