Algernon Charles Swinburne

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<br>ever before. <p/>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<br>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 Beginning with his unpublished 'Ode to Mazzini' (1857)<br>and ending with his last major critical work on <em>The Age of Shakespeare</em> (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<br>complicated reaction to the scandal of his first major collection <em>Poems and Ballads</em> (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<br>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<br>as moving through ancient and modern languages that Swinburne wrote with fluency. <p/>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.<br>