About Algernon Charles Swinburne
 English poet and critic, outstanding for prosodic innovations and noteworthy as the symbol of mid-Victorian poetic revolt. The characteristic qualities of his verse are insistent alliteration, unflagging rhythmic energy, sheer melodiousness, great variation of pace and stress, effortless expansion of a given theme, and evocative if rather imprecise use of imagery. His poetic style is highly individual and his command of word-colour and word-music striking. Swinburne's technical gifts and capacity for prosodic invention were extraordinary, but too often his poems' remorseless rhythms have a narcotic effect, and he has been accused of paying more attention to the melody of words than to their meaning. Swinburne was pagan in his sympathies and passionately antitheist.
Swinburne's father was an admiral, and his mother was a daughter of the 3rd Earl of Ashburnham. He attended Eton and Balliol College, Oxford, which he left in 1860 without taking a degree. There he met William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti and was attracted to their Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. An allowance from his father enabled him to follow a literary career.
In 1861 he met Richard Monckton Milnes (later Lord Houghton), who encouraged his writing and fostered his reputation. In the early 1860s Swinburne apparently suffered from an unhappy love affair about which little is known. Literary success came with the verse drama Atalanta in Calydon (1865), in which he attempted to re-create in English the spirit and form of Greek tragedy; his lyric powers are at their finest in this work. Atalanta was followed by the first series of Poems and Ballads in 1866, which clearly display Swinburne's preoccupation with masochism, flagellation, and paganism. This volume contains some of his finest poems, among them “Dolores” and “The Garden of Proserpine.” The book was vigorously attacked for its “feverish carnality”—Punch referred to the poet as “Mr. Swineborn”—though it was enthusiastically welcomed by the younger generation. In 1867 Swinburne met his idol, Giuseppe Mazzini, and the poetry collection Songs Before Sunrise (1871), which is principally concerned with the theme of political liberty, shows the influence of that Italian patriot. The second series of Poems and Ballads, less hectic and sensual than the first, appeared in 1878.
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