Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909) was an English lyric poet, dramatist, and critic. He was infamous for his passionate attacks on Victorian morality—he wrote verses on sex, sadomasochism, and vampires. His critical work helped stimulate appreciation of older Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists such as the Brontë sisters (Charlotte, Emily, Anne) and of William Blake.
Born in London to aristocracy, Swinburne socialized with the Pre-Raphaelites, including the poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Swinburne attained fame with Atalanta in Calydon (1865,) a poetic drama based on Greek tragedy. His other works include Poems and Ballads (1866,) A Song of Italy (1867,) and Tristram of Lyonesse (1882.)
Swinburne was also well known for his outrageous personality—exceptionally overdramatic, he liked to slide down banisters unclothed. He would also skip around a room, screeching his poetry at the top of his lungs or yelling blasphemous things to God.
For many years, Swinburne was stuck to a cycle of excess, breakdown, and revival. From 1878, Swinburne lived in near seclusion after his literary agent forcibly removed him from his unhealthy lifestyle and weaned him from alcohol and his decadent friends. Swinburne wrote 23 volumes of poetry, prose, and drama during these years.
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Man, a dunce uncouth, errs in age and youth: babies know the truth.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne
Topics: Children
Body and spirit are twins: God only knows which is which.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne
Change lays her hand not upon the truth.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne
Topics: Change
When fate has allowed to any man more than one great gift, accident or necessity seems usually to contrive that one shall encumber and impede the other.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne
A little space of time before time expires; a little way of breath.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne
Topics: Time Management
To have read the greatest works of any great poet, to have beheld or heard the greatest works of any great painter or musician, is a possession added to the best things in life.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne
Topics: Greatness
Time turns the old days to derision, our loves into corpses or wives; and marriage and death and division make barren our lives.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne
Topics: Time Management, Time
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