This volume in the 21st-Century Oxford Authors series offers students and readers a comprehensive selection of the work of Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909). This authoritative edition presents students with a new, more complete, more challenging, but also more credible Swinburne than ever before. This edition presents the first rigorous scholarly edition of a substantial selection of Swinburne's work ever produced. Swinburne was one of the most brilliant and controversial poets of the nineteenth century: a republican; a scorner of established Christianity; a writer of sexual daring; a poet of loss and of love. Yet he is also the most misunderstood poet of the Victorian period. This new edition, with substantial editorial material, presents a new and convincing portrait of a man sharply different from what is usually said of him. Beginning with his unpublished 'Ode to Mazzini' (1857) and ending with his last major critical work on The Age of Shakespeare (1908), this edition offers Swinburne in the round--a man of astonishing consistency whose formal innovations and critical penetration remain persistently engaging as well as provocative. A major introduction explores Swinburne's complicated reaction to the scandal of his first major collection, Poems and Ballads (1866); his life-long commitment to radical voices (Blake, Hugo, Landor, Shelley); his permanent hostility to tyranny; his sense of literature as a living form and of the heroic personality of the artist; his dazzling art criticism and adroit analysis of Renaissance and modern literature; his exceptional elegies for dead friends; his burlesques and richly atmospheric fiction and drama. The edition draws on rich contemporary sources, manuscripts, and the diverse print culture of Swinburne's day, as well as moving through ancient and modern languages that Swinburne wrote with fluency. Explanatory notes and commentary are included to enhance the study, understanding, and enjoyment of these works, and the edition includes an Introduction to the life of Swinburne.

About the Author
Francis O'Gorman has written widely on English literature chiefly from 1780 to the present, and mostly, but not exclusively, on poetry and non-fictional prose. His recent books include editions of Gaskell's Sylvia's Lovers (Oxford World's Classics, 2014), and Trollope's The Way We Live Now (Oxford World's Classics, 2016). He edited The Cambridge Companion to John Ruskin (CUP, 2015) and, most recently, volume 5 of Edward Thomas: Prose Writings: A Selected Edition (OUP, 2017). His Worrying: A Cultural and Literary History (Bloomsbury, 2015) was a Guardian 'book of the week'. Francis O'Gorman was educated at the University of Oxford as Organ Scholar of Lady Margaret Hall and is now Saintsbury Professor of English Literature at the university of Einburgh.

Reviews
With a lively introduction, expertly chosen selections, and a commanding scholarly apparatus, this volume presents a vital poet to a new generation of scholars and students. The full range of Swinburne's long and never-boring career is represented in bursts of poetry and criticism, from the unspeakably beautiful and fearsomely inventive to the politically confused and aesthetically derivative-all of them, for different reasons, fascinating. This definitive edition will help readers know the fullest version of our most enduring literary iconoclast. * Nathan K. Hensley, Georgetown University *
Francis O'Gorman's excellent edition is the ideal introduction to Swinburne, presenting a generous representative selection of his poetry and prose that includes his best-known work along with some less familiar but significant texts. Meticulously edited and contextualized, this is an edition that will be of enormous value to established scholars and new students alike. * Catherine Maxwell, Queen Mary University of London *
O'Gorman's handsome tome is an editorial feat that gives proportinate representation to all Swineburne's phases from the 1850s to the Edwardian period. ... The edition samples iconic poems and pivotal essays whilst recalibrating the Swinburne canon by including obscure yet fascinating work. The mixing of genres according to a rough chronological order offers a panoramic view of Swinburne's development and thematic concerns. * Notes and Queries *



Book Information
ISBN 9780198858775
Author Francis O'Gorman
Format Paperback
Page Count 734
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 788g
Dimensions(mm) 210mm * 138mm * 29mm