The Life of Swinburne

In paying tribute to the English poet Charles Algernon Swinburne (1837-1909), his friend and biographer Edmund Gosse (1849-1928) said ‘his character was no less strange than his physique … he was violent, arrogant, even vindictive, and yet no one could be more affectionate, more courteous, more loyal’. Swinburne and Gosse moved in the same literary set and also in the Pre-Raphaelite circle of artists: Swinburne was especially attached to D. G. Rossetti’s wife, Elizabeth Siddal. In his time, Swinburne became notorious for many of his works, including the controversial volume Poems and Ballads, published in 1866, but was also a novelist, playwright and literary critic. Gosse published this brief biography of his friend in 1912, and it gives a sketch of Swinburne’s formative years at Eton and Oxford, his rich literary life, and his final years, which were complicated by poor health. Gosse later edited posthumous collections of Swinburne’s works.