Customer Reviews

Swinburne: The Poet in His World (Elephant Books)

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Thomas's "Swinburne" is an acceptable biography, conveying the necessary names, dates and places of ACS's life. The volume, however, is curiously thin, given the monster tomes generated in recent years on Morris, Ruskin and other members of the mid-Victorian set. In covering his territory, one gets the impression that Thomas didn't quite know what to do with the prurient bits of Swinburne's life, alternately dwelling on them and skipping past them. Nonetheless, students of mid-Victorian culture should be grateful for a thoughtful book on so shamefully neglected a poet.

I've always fairly despised Swinburne's poetry. The overdose on alliteration and overripe settings never did much for me, and he has always been my least favorite of the major 19th-century poets. I knew he was also a well-regarded critic, and someone who'd led an anecdote-rich life, so when I recently I read a biography of the Rossetti siblings and S's name kept coming up in some of the more charming incidents, I thought I'd dive in.

This book is indeed rich in anecdotes. Swinburne, the son of an Admiral and of noble blood, emerges as such a singular figure, who associated with just about every Victorian of note. He led a fascinating life, carrying a wit with him that Wilde--who A. C. once dismissed as a "a harmless young nobody"--would have felt dampened his own parade a bit. He was an eternal child, a classicist, a revolutionary (Mazzini his padre d'oro, Napoleon III his bęte noire) who later turned conservative.

The quotes and references to Swinburne's prose travesties on Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, including an incident when the fevered queen cannot resist the "smouldering sensuality" of Wordsworth's "The Excursion" and so gives in to her passion for the old Laureate, are worth the price of the book alone.

This is more a straight biography than a literary one. The author discusses--and "defends"--his subject's erotic and political proclivities in detail, but not much of S's verse is quoted, and still less of his criticism and prose. I still don't like his poetry, and I am curious to read more of his prose and criticism--Swinburne had an inventive mind. But for a life of Swinburne focusing on his eccentricities, friendships, a cavalcade of humorous anecdotes, and the definite pains and agonies he suffered to alcohol and not quite being able to find his purpose in life, this book serves its purpose well. I came away with a new-found admiration for A. C. Swinburne.

Lots of information here, and the author doesn't shy away from the more controversial aspects of the poet's life. Two criticisms, however: First, the author jumps around, A LOT, making it sometimes hard to keep up chronologically with what is going on, and when. Second, I couldn't help but wonder if Thomas actually likes A.C. Swinburne. The timbre of the book tends to lean somewhat towards condescension at times, perhaps even derision.

John Swinburne, the poet's grandfather, was his idol. He had been a friend and sympathizer of Mirabeau and John Wilkes. Algernon Charles Swinburne was born in 1837. His father was an admiral, a family man. Admiral Swinburne subsidized his son's literary career.

At Eton the poet had shaped his obsessions and enthusiasms. The Victorian public school system was characteristically brutal, vicious. Swinburne was an oddity and a recluse. By age thirteen, reading on his own, he knew the plays of Marlowe, Webster, Ford, Massinger. In 1856 he entered Balliol College. Mid-Victorian Oxford had romantic charm. The Pre-Raphaelites discovered Oxford.

Benjamin Jowett claimed that Swinburne's essays were all language and no thought. Jowett taught the poet habits of work, (salvation by work). The fatal flaw of Swinburne's genius was that he lacked impetus, inspiration, notwithstanding his learning and facility.

Swinburne's POEMS AND BALLADS was brought out in 1866. He saw Byron's career as a mirror of his own. ATALANTA IN CALYDON was issued in 1865. It was dedicated to William Savage Landor.

As early as 1863 Swinburne suffered from fits. Swinburne was a figure head of an artistic movement, Art for Art's Sake. He received warnings about his conduct and the content of his writings from Browning and Ruskin. Jowett turned his Master's lodging into an intellectual salon. In the early 1870's he acted as Swinburne's external conscience. Swinburne's style of living exceeded his parents' ability to pay for it.

By 1879 Algernon's health was at its worst. Lady Swinburne and Theodore Watts-Dunton exchanged telegrams. Watts-Dunton was to act as domestic and moral nursemaid to Swinburne at The Pines located in Putney for the last thirty years of the poet's life.

This is a moderately-sized book recounting the life and times of Algernon Swinburne briskly and adequately.

I have recently come to study Swinburne's work in detail and found Thomas's biography helpful and interesting. It is a great book for those of us just coming to understand and appreciate the work of Algernon Charles Swinburne. The book reads easily, quickly and gives one a glimpse into Swinburne's world. I recommend this book for anyone wanting to begin studies on Swinburne and/or the Victorian World of writers and beyond.