Algernon Charles Swinburne

Algernon Charles Swinburne (5 April 1837 – 10 April 1909) was an English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic. He was a major contributor to the Pre-Raphaelite movement in poetry, along with Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Morris. His greatest works are the verse drama Atalanta in Calydon (1865), written in the form of an Ancient Greek tragedy, and his Pre-Raphaelite Poems and Ballads (1866).

In his poetry, Swinburne rebelled against the Christian morality of the Victorian era, drawing from classical, medieval, and Renaissance sources to explore atheism in "Hymn to Proserpine," suicide in "The Triumph of Time," lesbian desire in "Anactoria," and sadomasochism in "Dolores." While Swinburne's work attracted considerable scandal, it had prominent Victorian defenders, including John Ruskin.

Swinburne's poetic style—rhythmic, alliterative, and sensual—drew critical acclaim and moral condemnation during his lifetime. His poems are often complex, working double rhymes and anapestic meter into intricate stanzas. Swinburne's style was shaped by that of the French poet Charles Baudelaire, author of the notorious Les Fleurs du mal, for whom Swinburne wrote the poetic eulogy "Ave Atque Vale."

Swinburne was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature every year from 1903 to 1909. After the death of Alfred, Lord Tennyson in 1892, Swinburne was considered for the post of Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, but was disqualified by Queen Victoria on moral grounds. Swinburne's writings deeply influenced later Aesthetic and Decadent poets of the fin de siecle, such as Oscar Wilde and Ernest Dowson.

Swinburne was born at 7 Chester Street, Grosvenor Place, London, on 5 April 1837. He was the eldest of six children born to Captain (later Admiral) Charles Henry Swinburne (1797–1877) and Lady Jane Henrietta, daughter of the 3rd Earl of Ashburnham, a wealthy Northumbrian family. He grew up at East Dene in Bonchurch on the Isle of Wight. The Swinburnes also had a London home at Whitehall Gardens, Westminster. As a child, Swinburne was "nervous" and "frail", but "was also fired with nervous energy and fearlessness to the point of being reckless." He rode horses and wrote plays with his first cousin Mary Gordon who lived nearby on the Isle of Wight. They secretly collaborated on her second book, Children of the Chapel, which contained an unusual number of beatings.

Swinburne attended Eton College (1849–53), where he began to write poetry. At Eton, he won first prizes in French and Italian. He attended Balliol College, Oxford (1856–60), with a brief hiatus when he was rusticated from the university in 1859 for publicly supporting the attempted assassination of Napoleon III by Felice Orsini. He returned in May 1860, but never received a degree. At Oxford, Swinburne met several Pre-Raphaelites, including Dante Gabriel Rossetti. He also met William Morris. After leaving college, he lived in London and started an active writing career, where Rossetti was delighted with his "little Northumbrian friend", probably a reference to Swinburne's diminutive height—he was just 5'4".

Swinburne spent summer holidays at Capheaton Hall in Northumberland, the house of his grandfather, Sir John Swinburne, 6th Baronet (1762–1860), who had a famous library and was president of the Literary and Philosophical Society in Newcastle upon Tyne. Swinburne considered Northumberland to be his native county, an emotion reflected in poems like the intensely patriotic "Northumberland", "Grace Darling" and others. He enjoyed riding his pony across the moors; he was a daring horseman, "through honeyed leagues of the northland border", as he called the Scottish border in his Recollections. In the period 1857–60, Swinburne became a member of Lady Trevelyan's intellectual circle at Wallington Hall.

After his grandfather's death in 1860 he stayed with William Bell Scott in Newcastle. In 1861, Swinburne visited Menton on the French Riviera, staying at the Villa Laurenti to recover from the excessive use of alcohol. From Menton, Swinburne went to Italy, where he travelled extensively. In December 1862, Swinburne accompanied Scott and his guests, probably including Dante Gabriel Rossetti, on a trip to Tynemouth. Scott writes in his memoirs that, as they walked by the sea, Swinburne declaimed the as yet unpublished "Hymn to Proserpine" and "Laus Veneris" in his lilting intonation, while the waves "were running the whole length of the long level sands towards Cullercoats and sounding like far-off acclamations".