Who was Algernon Swinburne?
Poet, pre-Raphaelite, Critic and Writer.
Date and Place of Birth:
5th April 1837, 7 Chester Street, Grosvenor Place,
London, England. Christened Algernon Charles Swinburne.
Family Background:
Eldest of six children. His father was an Admiral
and his grandfather was Sir John Edward Swinburne, 6th Baronet .
Sir John had lived in France and used to dress up in pre-revolutionary
clothes. He lived at Capheaton Hall in Northumberland and Swinburne
would spend many summers in Northumberland riding horses. He had
a famous library at Capheaton and became the President of the Literary
and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne. His maternal grandfather
who was the Third Earl of Ashburnham. He was brought up as a high
church Anglican.
Education:
Eton College. Expelled from Balliol College,
Oxford.
Chronology/Biography of Algernon Charles Swinburne:
1848: Went to live
with the Reverend Foster Fenwick at his home Brooke Rectory on the
Isle of White to prepare him for moving on the Eton College. The
area was not new to him as both his parents and grandparents had
homes on the Isle of White at East Dene in Bonchurch.
1849: Meets WIlliam
Wordsworth whilst on a tour of the Lake District with his family.
Goes to Eton College.
1857: Whilst at Oxford
Swinburne meets the Pre-Raphaelite artists Dante
Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones
and WIlliam Morris whilst they are working
on the Arthurian Murals in the Oxford Union debating chamber. This
was to become the start of a major friendship with all of them.
He was influenced by Nihilism at Oxford but never lost his sense
of religiosity.
1858: Expelled from
Oxford University. Benjamin Jowett, the master of Balliol College
was a great admirer of his poetic talents and failed in saving him
from expulsion for publicly celebrating Orsini, the Italian patriot
who had recently attempted to assassinate the Emperor Napoleon III.
1860: Allowed to
return briefly to Balliol but was never given his degree.
1862: After the death
of Rossetti's wife Lizzie Siddall Swinburne went to live with Morris
and Rossetti at Tudor House, 16 Cheyne
Walk, Chelsea, London.He was never noted for his moderation throughout
his life and would rush about the room declaiming poetry. He would
drink to excess and was well known for his sexual excess, masochism
and deviance. He was also prone to what he called "Algernonic
exaggeration": Oscar WIlde was not
entirely convinced of his homosexuality and termed him a braggart.
In December Swinburne accompanied William Bell Scott of the Newcastle
Literary Society and his guests which almost certainly included
Rossetti, on a trip to Tynemouth. Scott
recalls that Swinburne spoke out aloud the unpublished "Hymn
to Proserpine" as they walked by the sea. He was just over
five foot tall but capable of exclaiming loudly.
House at 16 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea where Swinburne lived with
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
(© Anthony Blagg)
1865: His first poem
to be published in a periodical under his own name was "Atlanta
in Calydon". He was an accomplished poetical technician and
invented the Roundel form of poetry.
1866: "Poems
and Ballads" caused a sensation when it was published due to
their erotic nature.
1867: Meets Mazzini
the italian patriot and revolutionary who was then living in England.
1874: Publication
of the famous caricature of swinburne by "Ape" in the
periodical "Vanity Fair".
1877: Death of his
father.
1879: He becomes
gravely ill due to overuse of alcohol. Taken from his lodgings in
London by his friend and legal advisor Theodore Watts to live at
his house "the Pines" 11 Putney Hill, London, for the
rest of his life. Here he becomes much more sober. His growing deafness
also accounted for his increasing lack of sociability in later years.
1896: Death of his
mother, Lady Jane Swinburne.
Marriage:
Never married as homosexual.
Date and Place of Death:
10th April 1909, "The Pines 11 Putney Hill,
London, England of influenza.
Age at Death:
72.
Site of Grave:
St. Boniface's Church, Bonchurch, Isle-of-Wight.
Written Works:
- 1860:
"The Queen Mother", "Rosamund"
- 1862: “Dead
Love”
- 1865:
“Atalanta in Calydon”, "Chastelard"
- 1866:
“Notes on Poems and Reviews” (a reply to his critics), "Poems
and Ballads"
- 1867:
“A Song of Italy”
- 1868:
“William Blake”,“Sienna”
- 1870:
“Ode on the Proclamation of a French Republic”
- 1871:
“Songs before Sunrise”
- 1872: "Under
the Microscope" (a reply to Robert Buchanan's "The Fleshly
School of Poetry")
- 1874: "Bothwell"
- 1875:
“Songs of Two Nations”,“Essays and Studies”
- 1876: “Erechtheus;
A Tragedy”
- 1877:
“Charlotte Bronte”
- 1878:
“Poems and Ballads”
- 1880:
“Songs of the Springtides”, “Studies in Song”, "A Study of
Shakespeare," "The Heptalogia, or The Seven Against
Sense"
- 1881:
“Tristram of Lyonesse”, "Mary Stuart".
- 1882:
“A Century of Rounde,” "Tristram of Lyonesse and Other Poems"
- 1884: “A
Midsummer's Holiday”
- 1885:
“Marino Faliero: A Tragedy", "A Midsummer Holiday and
Other Poems"
- 1887:
“The Question”, "Gathered Songs"
- 1892:
“The Sisters” (Blank verse drama in contemporary setting)
- 1889: "A
Study of Ben Jonson"
- 1894:
“Studies in Prose and Poetry”
- 1896:
“The Tale of Balen”
- 1899: "Rosamund,
Queen of the Lombards, a blank-verse drama
- 1904:
“A Channel Passage”
- 1905:
“Love's Crosscurrents” (a novel first published in 1877 under
the pseudonym Mrs. Horace Manners as "A Year's Letters"
- 1908: "The
Duke of Gandia, (Unfinished blank-verse drama)
- 1909: "The
Three Plays of Shakespeare"
Places of Interest:
THE ISLE OF WIGHT:
Bonchurch.
LONDON:
Cheyne Walk, Chelsea.
Putney.
OXFORD:
The Oxford Union.
