Product Description

This volume brings together Swinburne's major poetic works, ATALANTA IN CALYDON (1865) and POEMS AND BALLADS (1866). ATALANTA IN CALYDON is a drama in classical Greek form, which revealed Swinburne's metrical skills and brought him celebrity. POEMS AND BALLADS brought him notoriety and demonstrates his preoccupation with de Sade, masochism, and femmes fatales. Also reproduced here is 'Notes on Poems and Reviews', a pamphlet Swinburne published in 1866 in response to hostile reviews of POEMS AND BALLADS.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #389985 in Books
• Published on: 2000-08-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 pages

About the Author
Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909) was educated at Eton and at Balliol College, Oxford where he was associated with Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelite circle. His influence on aesthetes such as Pater, and on a later generation of poets was considerable. Kenneth Haynes is Professor of English at Boston University and has co-edited HORACE IN ENGLISH for Penguin Classics.

Customer Reviews

The essence of Swinburne
This collection of poetry is a wonderful introduction to the sensual work of Swinburne. Some of it is beautiful; some of it may prove shocking to those who refuse to see the beauty in the dead corpse of a loved one. Surprisingly, Swinburne creates passion and desire even where there is death and longing. His lyricism emerges from love, passion, life, but also death, in bewildering beauty almost as a splendid phoenix rises from its ashes. Most poets write of death with misery and grief as the end of everything, but Swinburne makes passion and desire live for ever. It is this unique feature of his works that make him one of the greatest Victorian poets.

This is a brilliant edition, containing 75 pages of detailed and clear notes, facilitating the reader's understanding of the poem by providing annotations to biblical and mythological references and other works which influenced Swinburne.