About the Author:
Dr. Hohn H. Baker was born in Watford, England in 1972. He was educated at Mill Hill School in north London, Manchester University, and King's College London, and was awarded his PhD by King's College in 1999. His doctoral thesis was a study of the influence of the poetry of William Wordsworth upon that of Robert Browning. Since then he has taught English at a variety of universities, including Kingston University and the Open University. He currently teaches for the Open University, Birkbeck College, University of London, and the University of Westminster in London. He is particularly interested in English literature of the Romantic and Victorian periods, but has taught literature of a wide variety of periods and genres from Chaucer to Modernism.

Wordsworth's poetry was far more influential upon that of Robert Browning than has hitherto been supposed. Browning read Wordsworth from an early age, and became an admirer of much of his work. In particular, Wordsworth's aesthetic beliefs about the poet's role in the world were as important to Browning's own conception of this role as those of Shelley, whose relationship with Browning has been far more extensively discussed. This book principally uses Harold Bloom's "influence theory" to examine this relationship, which can usefully be seen as a struggle on Browning's part to throw off the burden of influence imposed upon him by his Romantic predecessor. It also puts forward more historical and biographical explanations for some of the relationship's complexities, including Browning's awareness of Wordsworth's rising reputation in the late Victorian period and the responsibilities imposed upon him in his later career by his own position as a literary lion.

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