Algernon
Charles Swinburne
born April 5, 1837, London
died April 10, 1909, Putney, London
English poet and critic, outstanding for
prosodic innovations and noteworthy as the
symbol of mid-Victorian poetic revolt. The
characteristic qualities of his verse are
insistent alliteration, unflagging rhythmic
energy, sheer melodiousness, great variation
of pace and stress, effortless expansion of
a given theme, and evocative if rather
imprecise use of imagery. His poetic style
is highly individual and his command of
word-colour and word-music striking.
Swinburne’s technical gifts and capacity for
prosodic invention were extraordinary, but
too often his poems’ remorseless rhythms
have a narcotic effect, and he has been
accused of paying more attention to the
melody of words than to their meaning.
Swinburne was pagan in his sympathies and
passionately antitheist. Swinburne’s
biography of John Keats appeared in the
ninth edition of the Encyclopędia Britannica
(see the Britannica Classic: John Keats).
Swinburne’s father was an admiral, and
his mother was a daughter of the 3rd Earl of
Ashburnham. He attended Eton and Balliol
College, Oxford, which he left in 1860
without taking a degree. There he met
William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones, and
Dante Gabriel Rossetti and was attracted to
their Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. An
allowance from his father enabled him to
follow a literary career.
In 1861 he met Richard Monckton Milnes
(later Lord Houghton), who encouraged his
writing and fostered his reputation. In the
early 1860s Swinburne apparently suffered
from an unhappy love affair about which
little is known. Literary success came with
the verse drama Atalanta in Calydon (1865),
in which he attempted to re-create in
English the spirit and form of Greek
tragedy; his lyric powers are at their
finest in this work. Atalanta was followed
by the first series of Poems and Ballads in
1866, which clearly display Swinburne’s
preoccupation with masochism, flagellation,
and paganism. This volume contains some of
his finest poems, among them “Dolores” and
“The Garden of Proserpine.” The book was
vigorously attacked for its “feverish
carnality”—Punch referred to the poet as
“Mr. Swineborn”—though it was
enthusiastically welcomed by the younger
generation. In 1867 Swinburne met his idol,
Giuseppe Mazzini, and the poetry collection
Songs Before Sunrise (1871), which is
principally concerned with the theme of
political liberty, shows the influence of
that Italian patriot. The second series of
Poems and Ballads, less hectic and sensual
than the first, appeared in 1878.
During this time Swinburne’s health was
being undermined by alcoholism and by the
excesses resulting from his abnormal
temperament and masochistic tendencies; he
experienced periodic fits of intense nervous
excitement, from which, however, his
remarkable powers of recuperation long
enabled him to recover quickly. In 1879 he
collapsed completely and was rescued and
restored to health by his friend Theodore
Watts-Dunton. The last 30 years of his life
were spent at The Pines, Putney, under the
guardianship of Watts-Dunton, who maintained
a strict regimen and encouraged Swinburne to
devote himself to writing. Swinburne
eventually became a figure of respectability
and adopted reactionary views. He published
23 volumes of poetry, prose, and drama
during these years, but, apart from the long
poem Tristram of Lyonesse (1882) and the
verse tragedy Marino Faliero (1885), his
most important poetry belongs to the first
half of his life.
Swinburne was also an important and
prolific English literary critic of the
later 19th century. Among his best critical
writings are Essays and Studies (1875) and
his monographs on William Shakespeare
(1880), Victor Hugo (1886), and Ben Jonson
(1889). His devotion to Shakespeare and his
unrivaled knowledge of Elizabethan and
Jacobean drama are reflected in his early
play Chastelard (1865). The latter work was
the first of a trilogy on Mary, queen of
Scots, who held a peculiar fascination for
him; Bothwell (1874) and Mary Stuart (1881)
followed. He also wrote on William Blake,
Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Charles
Baudelaire, and his elegy on the latter, Ave
Atque Vale (1867–68), is among his finest
works.
