Emerging from various reading groups, the societies indicated the poet's fame, and unusually were forming in his lifetime.
[2] The earliest Browning Society, and longest continuing, was constituted in 1877 by Hiram Corson at Cornell University.
[3] The most notable Browning Society was established in London in 1881 by Frederick James Furnivall and Emily Hickey.
Meeting monthly at University College London, it extended Browning's readership by publishing study aids for his works, along with cheaper editions and encouragement for amateur productions of his plays.
[4] Encouraged by the society she created a Handbook to the Works of Robert Browning[5] assisted by advice from the animal artist John Trivett Nettleship[4] who had written some of the earliest work about Browning.