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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Algernon Swinburne
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(1837–1909)
Poet of great virtuosity in his use of rhythm, who shot to fame in the 1860s as a figure of scandal, defying the conventions of Victorian respectability. The book which had this effect was Poems and Ballads (1866), with its themes of sexual perversion, masochism (he had acquired at Eton a taste for flagellation) and irreligion. One of its best-known lines (in 'Hymn to Proserpine') takes the traditional final capitulation of the Roman emperor Julian the Apostate ('thou hast conquered, Galilean') and gives it a twist very much less pleasing to the believing Christian: 'Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown gray from thy breath'. In the 1870s Swinburne was at the centre of avant-garde London, defending *Rossetti in the battle over the 'fleshly school of poetry' and campaigning for all forms of liberty.
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Alcohol and the physical excesses of his private life increasingly threatened his health, until he was taken in hand by a friend, Theodore Watts (1832–1914), a solicitor turned writer. Watts, who changed his name in 1896 to Watts-Dunton, took Swinburne in 1879 to live with him at the Pines in Putney. Here, for the rest of his life, the poet was restricted to a quiet regime, but one in which he remained immensely productive. By the early 20C the enfant terrible had become a grand old man of letters.
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