The son of grief begot by joy?
Being sightless, wilt thou see?
Being sexless, wilt thou be
Maiden or boy?
Algernon Charles Swinburne (5 April 1837 - 10 April 1909) was an English poet, novelist, playwright, and literary critic. He is best known for his debut poetry collection Poems and Ballads which was almost banned due to its frank depictions of same-sex desire and kinks. Swinburne was also the author of several plays and two novels (although only one, Love's Cross-Currents was completed and published during his lifetime; his incomplete second novel Lesbia Brandon was released posthumously), and he contributed to the Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Algernon was born in London on 5 April 1837, the eldest of six children to Captain (later Admiral) Charles Henry Swinburne (1797-1877) and Lady Jane Henrietta, daughter of the 3rd Earl of Ashburnham, a wealthy Northumbrian family. He was described as "nervous" and "frail" but "was also fired within nervous energy and fearlessness to the point of being reckless."
Swinburne was educated at Eton (where he may have developed his fascination with flagellation) and later matriculated at Balliol College, Oxford. There, he met and formed lasting friendships with Pre-Raphaelite artists and writers, including William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, but he left without completing his degree. His father disapproved of his son's withdrawal but provided him a permanent allowance; Swinburne moved to London and devoted his life to writing.
In 1860, Swinburne published two verse dramas in the volume The Queen-Mother and Rosamond, which was largely ignored. However, he wrote Atlanta in Calydon, an imitation of Greek tragedy, in 1865, which was an instant success; Alfred, Lord Tennyson praised the work highly. The following year, Swinburne published Poems and Ballads, and the work brought him instant notoriety, in no small part because of its choice of topics, including sadomasochism, lesbianism, necrophilia, and anti-Christianity (he was raised an Anglo-Catholic, but he rejected the faith while he was in Balliol College and developed pagan sympathies).
Throughout his literary career, Swinburne had also been living a dissolute life of heavy drinking and masochistic sexual practices; his dissipation brought on a number of attacks similar to epileptical fits, but his energy enabled him to return each time to his decadent lifestyle.
In September 1879, Swinburne's health worsened, leading him to collapse, and Theodore Watts-Dunton, Swinburne's friend and literary agent, had to intervene. He took Swinburne to a suburban home in Putney and imposed a regimen that led Swinburne's health to improve and end his drinking; Swinburne eventually lost his youthful rebelliousness and turned into a figure of social respectability. Watts-Dunton encouraged him to continue writing, and many more volumes of poetry followed, including the second and third series of Poems and Ballads (1878 and 1889) and Tristram of Lyonesse (1882). In addition, Swinburne published many dramas and works of literary criticism. He wrote in various literary forms, from classical verse styles to medieval and Renaissance genres, from burlesque to ballads and roundels, and had a large influence on early Modern poets.
Swinburne continued to live with Watts-Dunton at The Pines, Putney, until his death from pneumonia on 10 April 1909. His sister Isabel arranged a Christian burial at St. Boniface Church, Bonchurch, on the Isle of Wight, against his wishes.
Swinburne is considered a poet of the Decadent movement, though he might have professed to more vice than he actually indulged in to advertise his deviance; he spread a rumour that he had sex with a monkey and then ate it, but Oscar Wilde, another major figure of the Decadent movement, said that Swinburne was "a braggart in matters of vice, who had done everything he could to convince his fellow citizens of his homosexuality and bestiality without being in the slightest degree a homosexual or a bestialiser." Despite his outlandish claims, Swinburne was private and cautious when it came to his bisexuality; though he wrote vast amounts of flagellation literature which eroticises both men and women, and helped inspire the page quote for Brains and Bondage in the process, it was all published anonymously to protect him from the Victorian era's harsh sodomy laws.
Appearances in other media:
Works by Swinburne contain examples of:
- All Girls Want Bad Boys: Consistently inverted.
- Author Avatar: Swinburne openly admitted that he modelled the character of Bertie Seyton - a sensitive, idealistic Eton boy who is implied to be bisexual and likes reading poetry, cross-dressing, and being whipped - on himself.
- Ballad of X: Several examples from Poems and Ballads, as you might expect. 'A Ballad of Life', 'A Ballad of Death', and 'A Ballad of Burdens' stand out.
- Black Comedy: All over the place.
- Brains and Bondage: All of Swinburne's main characters are highly intelligent, creative, well-educated, and kinky.
- Brooding Boy, Gentle Girl: Inverted with sensitive Bertie and angsty Lesbia.
- Casual Kink: All over the place, particularly with regards to birching.
- Corrupt the Cutie: The narrator by Venus herself, no less, in 'Laus Veneris' and Tebaldeo by Lucretia in The Chronicle of Tebaldeo Tebaldei.
- Defector from Decadence: Played straight and then subverted in 'Laus Veneris'. The protagonist, who has been living a dissolute life of nonstop sex with Venus herself, attempts to break free of her clutches and reconcile with the Christian God... who tells him that he is too sinful ever to go to Heaven. The protagonist promptly does a Faith–Heel Turn and goes straight back to Venus. The Homoerotic Subtext of being cast out of Christianity because you are too sexually sinful to be sent anywhere but Hell is very apparent.
- Downer Ending: Swinburne never finished Lesbia Brandon, but it ends extremely badly for both Lesbia and Bertie, and the other characters don't seem to be headed for happy endings either.
- Everyone Is Bi: Not outright stated due to its illegality in Victorian England, but implied to be the case in most of Swinburne's novels and plays. Bertie Seyton, the protagonist of Lesbia Brandon, is attracted to women but enjoys being beaten by his male tutor. The only character confirmed not to be bisexual is Lesbia herself, with tragic consequences for herself and Bertie.
- Gentleman Snarker: Lady Midhurst, of Love's Cross-Currents and Lesbia Brandon, is the female equivalent. Also Lord Linley, in a considerably nastier way.
- Genre Throwback: Atlanta in Calydon, a play he wrote imitating the tragedies of ancient Greece.
- Master Poisoner: Lucretia Borgia in The Chronicle of Tebaldeo Tebaldei.
- Rape by Proxy: Narrowly averted. Linley in Lesbia Brandon puts pressure on a clearly uncomfortable Bertie to sleep with a sex worker he has hired. Bertie overcomes his shyness and declines when things start to escalate but is humiliated by the experience.
- Religion Rant Song: "Hymn to Prosperine" is this, mixed with a Grief Song, lamenting the rise of the Christian faith for displacing Prosperine and the pagan Roman pantheon.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Swinburne is very fond of dishing these out - a lot of his poetry is written from the perspective of a narrator whose lover has deserted them. 'Satia Te Sanguine', 'Felise' and 'The Triumph of Time' are particularly famous examples.
- The Vamp: Some of the most iconic examples in Victorian poetry and Swinburne's favourite trope for his female characters. They're typically paired with a male Love Martyr.
