Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909), dramatist, novelist and critic, was late Victorian England's unofficial Poet Laureate. Swinburne was admired by his contemporaries for his technical brilliance, his facility with classical and medieval forms, and his courage in expressing his sensual, erotic imagination. He was one of the most important Victorian poets, the founding figure for British aestheticism, and the dominant influence for fin-de-siecle and many modernist poets. This collection of eleven new essays by leading international scholars offers a thorough revaluation of this fascinating and complex figure. It situates him in the light of current critical work on cosmopolitanism, politics, form, Victorian Hellenism, gender and sexuality, the arts, and aestheticism and its contested relation to literary modernism. The essays in this collection reassess Swinburne's work and reconstruct his vital and often provocative contribution to the Victorian cultural debate.

About the Author
Catherine Maxwell is Professor of Victorian Literature at Queen Mary, University of London|Stefano Evangelista is Fellow and Tutor in English at Trinity College, University of Oxford.

Reviews

Candid, ambitious and sympathetic, this is a confident and often eloquent volume on a writer who keeps resisting the explanations that we are told best account for him. Immaculately edited, it earns its place among the best of modern writing in Algernon Charles Swinburne - poet and enigma.
Francis O'Gorman, Times Literary Supplement, Mischief and other minds, 10/01/2014

|It encourages those interested in Swinburne's work to read him in many different ways and take part in the effort of mapping his vast poetic and critical corpus.

, Yisrael Levin, English Literature in Transition 1880 - 1920, 2014

'The chapters provide an enriching blend of perspectives that, to varying degrees, pivot on the ways 'sexuality itself might help shape, inform, or condition style, poetics, and other aspects of literary practice'. The essays collected in Unofficial Laureate... will be of immense benefit to students, experts, and dilettantes of Swinburne. They are set to cast a long shadow, to galvanize and update Swinburne studies, reigniting the slow-burning interest in this underrated Victorian poet and his work.'
Kostas Boyiopoulos, Durham University

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Book Information
ISBN 9780719086250
Author Catherine Maxwell
Format Hardback
Page Count 272
Imprint Manchester University Press
Publisher Manchester University Press
Dimensions(mm) 216mm * 138mm * 19mm