Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909) is, with Browning and Tennyson, one of the touchstone Victorian poets. He was a major critic and an important fiction writer as well. Emerging out of the Pre-Raphaelite circle, his bold and innovative work made him both a celebrated and controversial writer at home and a figure of international importance. Hugo, Baudelaire, and Mallarmé were among his great admirers.
Jerome McGann and Charles L. Sligh now present a generous sampling of Swinburne’s poetry and prose. This wide-ranging collection satisfies a long need for a comprehensive selection of Swinburne’s work. It is accompanied by learned and critically incisive commentaries and notes.
Jerome McGann, John Stewart Bryan Professor at the University of Virginia, is the author of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the Game That Must Be Lost and editor of Rossetti’s Collected Poetry and Prose, both published by Yale University Press. Charles L. Sligh is a research fellow at The Complete Writings and Pictures of Dante Gabriel Rossetti: A Hypermedia Research Archive.