Poems and Ballads and Atalanta in Calydon - Softcover

Swinburne, Algernon Charles

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140422501 ISBN 13: 9780140422504

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 2001

Synopsis

Republican, pagan, a sensualist alive to pleasure and to pain, Swinburne flouted the rules of Victorian decorum and morality in his life and work He created a unique means of expression through what Tennyson called his 'wonderful rhythmic invention', and yet his verse was influenced by poets from numerous periods and countries. Many of his poems are opulent hymns to sensual love, in all its aspects, and to death and to the loss of love. Swinburne's verse is immensely diverse in form: together these two works demonstrate its rich complexity and variety. As T. S. Eliot remarked, there is no reason to call his power over words anything but genius.

This volume brings together Swinburne's major poetic works, Atalanta in Calydon (1865) and Poems and Ballads (1866). Atalanta in Calydon is a drama in classical Greek form, which revealed Swinburne's metrical skills and brought him celebrity. Poems and Ballads brought him notoriety and demonstrates his preoccupation with de Sade, masochism, and femmes fatales. Also reproduced here is 'Notes on Poems and Reviews', a pamphlet Swinburne published in 1866 in response to hostile reviews of Poems and Ballads. In addition, this Penguin edition contains a preface, a table of dates, a commentary on the poems and two appendices, one of which is a map of the places mentioned in Atalanta in Calydon.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

About this title

About the Author

Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909) was educated at Eton and at Balliol College, Oxford where he was associated with Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelite circle. His influence on aesthetes such as Pater, and on a later generation of poets was considerable.

Kenneth Haynes is Professor of English at Boston University and has co-edited Horace in English for Penguin Classics.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0140422501
• ISBN 13: 9780140422504
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 448
• Editor: Haynes Kenneth