The first title in Volume XV is Dramatic Idylls, Second Series (1880). Taking his subjects from classical history, colonial India, Arabian legend, medieval sorcery, Jewish folk tales, and Greek
myth, Browning startles the reader with the rapidity of his thought and the inventiveness of his art. In Jocoseria (1883) Browning’s subjects range across time and space from Hebraic legend to
the England of the Romantics. Such variety helped attract new readers: Jocoseria was immediately successful, and a second edition was printed in the same year as the first. Although Browning’s
next volume, Ferishtah’s Fancies (1884), was so popular that three editions were printed in less than two years, this artful string of anecdotes and lyrics has attracted little favorable
criticism. The materials— Persian legends and Arabic backgrounds—chimed with the wildly popular Orientalism of FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát, Whistler’s Peacock Room, and Alma-Tadema’s paintings. But
the thought was pure Browning in his most optimistic vein, and not at all in tune with the growing pessimism of the day.
