The Poems of Browning is the first collected edition to be based on the earliest printed texts, and to present these texts in order of their composition.Together, volumes I and II provide an authoritative and accessible tribute to this great poet.

Volume I, 1826-1840 traces Browning's career up to the writing of Sordello. It includes his only surviving juvenilia: The Dance of Death and The First-Borm of Egypt; Pauline, his first anonymous publication, and Paracelsus, the poem which made his literary reputation.