Selected Verse

Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909) was one of English poetry's truly distinctive stylists. Next to Tennyson and Browning, he was one of the major poets of the Victorian era; and he was almost certainly the most provocative. In this new selection, Swinburne's first major collection, the "Poems and Ballads" of 1866, is represented much more fully than in earlier selections, and ample extracts are given from his later masterpiece, the Arthurian epic "Tristram of Lyonesse" (1882). This edition also includes generous passages from the best of Swinburne's five-act tragedies, "Chastelard and Bothwell", which have not been reprinted for nearly a century. Above all, the book aims to make Swinburne once again a poet to be read for pleasure.