Poems and Ballads

POEMS AND BALLADS

BY

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE

A NEW EDITION

LONDON

CHATTO & WINDUS

1902

DESCRIPTION

(ii) + 338 + (ii)

Book measures 195mm x 130mm approximately.

Beautifully bound by Hatchards in half blue / green calf over cloth covered boards. Spine with five raised gilt-dotted bands with gilt boxed motifs to compartments and title, author and date in gilt. Marbled end-papers and paste-downs. Printed pages are finer quality paper. Top edges in gilt, remainder uncut.

CONDITION

In overall good condition. The binding is firm and strong. The leather shows some minor surface scratches and a few knocks to boards and some very light wear to upper and lower hinges. Some mild bumping to board corners. Internally the pages are remarkably clean throughout with just a few patches of browning and the odd spot towards end-papers and half-title. Neat previous owner bookplate to front end-paper.

Overall, a wonderfully bound Hatchards volume of Swinburne's works in great condition.

INTERESTING

Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837 to 1909) was an English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic. He wrote several novels and collections of poetry such as Poems and Ballads, and contributed to the famous 11th Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.

Swinburne wrote about many taboo topics, such as lesbianism, cannibalism, sado-masochism, and anti-theism. His poems have many common motifs, such as the ocean, time, and death.

Swinburne attended Eton College (1849–53), where he started writing poetry, and later attended Balliol College, Oxford (1856–60) with a brief hiatus when he was rusticated from the university in 1859 for having publicly supported the attempted assassination of Napoleon III by Felice Orsini. He returned in May 1860, though he never received a degree.

Poems and Ballads caused a sensation when it was first published, especially the poems written in homage of Sappho of Lesbos such as "Anactoria" and "Sapphics". Other poems in this volume such as "The Leper," "Laus Veneris," and "St Dorothy" evoke a Victorian fascination with the Middle Ages, and are explicitly mediaeval in style, tone and construction.