Algernon Charles Swinburne
1837 - 1909

English poet and critic. Of his many collections of verse, the first book of Poems and Ballads (1866) is the most important, containing many of his best (and some of his most sensational) poems, such as 'The Garden of rosperine', 'Dolores' and 'The Triumph of Time'. Other notable poetic works include his play Atalanta in Calydon (1865), Songs Before Sunrise (1871) and Tristram of Lyonesse (1882). He produced studies of many writers, including Lord Byron, William Blake, Victor Hugo and Charles Baudelaire, but it was his work on Shakespeare and his contemporaries which became his most influential criticism.