SOURCE: Gibson, Mary Ellis. “The Criminal Body in Victorian Britain: The Case of The Ring and the Book.” Browning Institute Studies 18 (1990): 73-93.

In the following essay, Gibson perceives The Ring and the Book to be based on Victorian responses to crime and the body.

“For the choice of subject we have nothing but condemnation. It is Mr Browning's luck” (Litzinger 331). Thus the reviewer for Chamber's Journal in 1869 summed up his reaction to the subject matter of Browning's The Ring and the Book. Indeed, this account of Browning's subject has seemed satisfactory to all but the biographically inclined of Browning's critics. Browning's subject—a grisly murder and its attendant trials—can easily enough be explained by reference to his account of discovering his historical sources in Book 1 of The Ring and the Book or by a general discussion of Browning's personal propensity for the criminal or the bizarre. I...