Under Roman law at the time, trials were not held in open court but rather by correspondence, whereupon each witness was required to submit a written statement for future adjudication.

Browsing in a flea market in Florence in 1860, Browning came across a large volume of these written statements relating to the 1698 Franceschini case, and bought it on the spot.

There were no takers, and following his wife's death and his return to England, Browning revived his old plan for a long poem based on the Roman murder case almost eight years after the idea had first struck him.

Book 10 is perhaps the best-known of the monologues in the poem, as Pope Innocent XII considers Franceschini's appeal against a wider backdrop of moral and theological questions, including well-wrought reflections on the nature of good and evil.

[5] An illustrated guide of the region in which the story is set was published in 1913, entitled The Country of The Ring and the Book and written by Sir Frederick Treves, 1st Baronet.

In July 2008, a two-part play adaptation of this story, set in poetry and prose by Martyn Wade and starring Anton Lesser as Browning, Roger Allam as Guido Franceschini and Louise Brealey as Pompilia, was broadcast as the BBC Radio 4 "Classic Serial".