ABSTRACT
The English poet, Algernon Swinburne, in his life and writings, provides an example of a child who grew up with and always retained fantasies of being beaten that amounted to obsessions. The beatings that he idealized were the ones that were administered to him as a student at Eton, to which he was sent when he was twelve in 1849. They memorably began at the hands of a "stunning tutor". Swinburne gave Watts-Dunton the only copy of the manuscript of Lesbia Brandon to read, and "major" refused to return several chapters of it, thus prohibiting and preventing its publication in the author's lifetime. Swinburne reversed so many of his youthful rebellious attitudes and anti-establishment views, becoming almost as enthusiastic a supporter of imperialist England as his despised fellow-poet Kipling. A late tragedy of Swinburne's, The Sisters—a play set in the 19th century done in blank verse—was written at about the same time.
