(b London, April 5, 1837; d London, April 10, 1909).
English poet and critic. His letters and critical writings reveal him as unusually learned about, and sensitive to, the visual arts. His interest in painting was stimulated in 1857 when he met Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris at Oxford and, under their influence, adopted Pre-Raphaelite ideals. The effect on his poetry was transitory, but it was important for his prose and criticism. His Poems and Ballads (London, 1866), revolutionary in technique and in emphasis on erotic subject-matter, caused a sensation. William Blake (1868), an influential work of Victorian art criticism and Swinburne’s most important contribution in that field, not only promoted Blake’s re-evaluation but was also a powerful manifesto of Art for Art’s Sake and of Symbolist Aestheticism. For Swinburne the only correct response to a work of art was another work of art; hence his poetic, impressionistic and highly subjective prose criticism, with many synaesthetic comparisons (in ...
