Swinburne, Algernon Charles

(1837-1909)

   Born into an aristocratic London family, he was reared at Bonchurch on the Isle of Wight. After Eton College and Balliol College, Oxford (he did not graduate), he settled in London, where he became one of the pre-Raphaelites (see Dante Gabriel Rossetti). His first book, The Queen Mother and Rosamond (1860), was two blank verse plays. Atalanta in Calydon (1865), a poetic drama modeled on Greek tragedy, brought him fame. His poetry was highly controversial, much of it containing recurring themes of sadomasochism, death-wish, lesbianism and anti-Christian sentiments. He suffered from chronic epilepsy and alcoholism, and by 1878 he was near death. He was restored to health under the guardianship of Theodore Watts-Dunton (see entry) with whom he lived after 1879 at The Pines, Putney, until he died of influenza. He was buried at Bonchurch. Most of his creative work was done in the first half of his life. He wrote three related dramas on Mary, Queen of Scots: Chasteland (1865), Bothwell (1874) and Mary Stuart (1881). Some of his poems: "A Ballad of Dreamland," "After Death," "Evening by the Sea," "In Guernsey," "On the Downs," "The Oblation."

   Sources: A Treasury of Poems for Worship and Devotion. Charles L. Wallis, ed. Harper, 1959. Choice of Swinburne's Verse. Robert Nye, ed. Faber and Faber, 1973. Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. English Poetry: Author Search. Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 1995 (http://www.lib.utexas.edu:8080/search/epoetry/author.html). First Lines, Poems Written in Youth, from Herbert to Heaney. Jon Stallworthy, ed. Carcanet, 1987. Microsoft Encarta 2006 (DVD). Microsoft Corporation, 2006. Poets of the English Language. Vols. I-V. W.H. Auden and Norman Holmes Pearson, eds. Viking Press, 1950. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Home Book of Verse. Burton Egbert Stevenson, ed. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1953. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. The Symbolist Poem: The Development of the English Tradition. Edward Engelberg, ed. E.P. Dutton, 1967. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia).