Charles Ives, who left many unfinished works at his death—some, by design—had at one point planned a series of overtures called "Men of Literature." The Robert Browning Overture was the only entry in the series that Ives substantially completed; orchestral works based on Emerson and Matthew Arnold never made it past the sketch stage, while a Whitman-themed overture remained only a hypthetical project.

In the present work, Ives' aim was to portray the world and writings of Browning through purely musical means. Perhaps surprisingly, he used the term "tone poem"—a favorite appellation of the Romantic period—to describe this overture. Not sympathetic to the composers of this repertoire, by and large, Ives used the phrase to mean a composition that took shape as an active discourse—as in a literary work—rather than as pure re-creative description through musical means.

The Robert Browning Overture unfolds in an introduction followed by a fast section, a set of variations in slow tempo, a return of the fast music, a fugue, and an abbreviated return of the fast music. Written from 1908 to 1912, it is in Ives' most complex and advanced style, incorporating many independent musical streams playing simultaneously. Ives later adapted some of the music for use in his 1921 song Paracelsus (Kz136), a setting of a text by Browning.

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