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Terry L. Meyers, Yisrael Levin (ed.), A. C. Swinburne and the Singing Word: New Perspectives on the Mature Work., Notes and Queries, Volume 59, Issue 1, March 2012, Pages 148–150, https://doi.org/10.1093/notesj/gjr259
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Extract
FIFTY years ago, Cecil Lang published his six volumes of The Swinburne Letters (1959–62). Those were followed by Lang's special issue of Victorian Poetry (1970) and, not long thereafter, by Jerome McGann's extraordinary Swinburne: An Experiment in Criticism (1972). Criticism concerning Swinburne and scholarship, almost always of impressive quality, accelerated.
Fifty years later, Swinburne's admirers (I'm one) commemorated the centenary of his death—a conference at the University of London in 2009 and two collections of essays, a special issue of Victorian Poetry (which Rikky Rooksby and I edited) and this collection, which examines Swinburne's later and lesser known works. The aim here is ambitious, as articulated by Yisrael Levin in his introduction and by David Riede in his afterword, to ‘challenge the prevalent critical attitudes’ that leave Swinburne still neglected and to raise him to his ‘rightful position among the top three Victorian poets’.
In the conventional mind, and even in the (supposedly) more tolerant academy, the blocks to Swinburne's ascending to his place have always been the radicalism, antitheism, and eroticism of his early work. Thomas Hardy in 1910 caught the 1860's resistance to Swinburne:
And in 1924 Hardy caught a next generation's continuing rejection, on the same grounds. In ‘A Refusal’, the Dean of Westminster sputters his indignation at a proposal to honour Byron at Poets’ Corner and concludes:It was as though a garland of red roses
Had fallen about the hood of some smug nun
When irresponsibly dropped as from the sun,
In fulth of numbers freaked with musical closes,
Upon Victoria's formal middle time
His leaves of rhythm and rhyme.
But, with some bravado, this collection avoids Swinburne's challenges to the moral, political, and theological Establishment—Atalanta in Calydon (1865), Poems and Ballads (1866), and Songs before Sunrise (1871) are too early for consideration by these writers (though Rikky Rooksby's insightful essay on ‘Selecting Swinburne’ surveys anthologists’ grappling with those challenges).’Twill next be expected
That I get erected
To Shelley a tablet
In some niche or gablet.
Then—what makes my skin burn,
Yea, forehead to chin burn—
That I ensconce Swinburne!
