This eBook was produced by Dick Adicks. Introduction and Notes: Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke, from the edition of Browning's poems published by Thomas Y. Crowell and Company, New York, in 1898. Editing conventions: The digraphs have been silently rendered as "ae" or "oe." <u`> indicates u-grave, <a`> a-grave, <e`> e-grave, and <a^> a-circumflex. Similarly, u-umlaut is rendered as "ue." Stanza and section numbers have been moved to the left margin, and periods that follow them have been removed. Periods have been omitted after Roman numerals in the titles of popes and nobles. In keeping with contemporary practice, commas have been deleted when they precede dashes and spaces deleted in such contractions as "there's" where the printed text has "there 's." In references to Bible verses, Roman numerals have been changed to Arabic numerals (e. g., "John iii.16" is changed to "John 3:16"). MEN AND WOMEN BY ROBERT BROWNING CONTENTS Introduction (by Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke) "Transcendentalism: A Poem in Twelve Books" How It Strikes a Contemporary Artemis Prologizes An Epistle Containing the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish, the Arab Physician Johannes Agricola in Meditation Pictor Ignotus Fra Lippo Lippi Andrea del Sarto The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church Bishop Blougram's Apology Cleon Rudel to the Lady of Tripoli One Word More INTRODUCTION Thirteen years after the publication, in 1855, of the Poems, in two volumes, entitled "Men and Women," Browning reviewed his work and made an interesting reclassification of it. He separated the simpler pieces of a lyric or epic cast--such rhymed presentations of an emotional moment, for example, as "Mesmerism" and "A Woman's Last Word," or the picturesque rhymed verse telling a story of an experience, such as "Childe Roland" and "The Statue and the Bust"--from their more complex companions, which were almost altogether in blank verse, and, in general, markedly personified a typical man in his environment, a Cleon or Fra Lippo, a Rudel or a Blougram. These boldly sculptured figures he set apart from the others as the fit components of the more closely related group which ever since has constituted the division now known as "Men and Women."