Note 21 — Chapter III
Reading edition
Browning's letter to Elizabeth Barrett, Feb. 13, 1846, which does not seem to have been adequately noticed. The piece is ignored by Mrs Orr. He speaks of suspending the publication of the "unlucky play" until a second edition of the Bells—an "apparition" which Moxon, he says, seems to think possible; and then inserting it before Luria: it will then be "in its place, for it was written two or three years ago." In other words, The Soul's Tragedy was written in 1843-44, between Colombe's Birthday and Luria.