Afterword

Swinburne studies are in a healthy state at the poet’s centenary, as is demonstrated not only by the essays collected here, but by the forthcoming special Swinburne edition of Victorian Poetry edited by Rikky Rooksby and Terry L. Meyers, and by a major Swinburne centenary conference at the University of London, organized by Catherine Maxwell, Patricia Pulham, and Stefano Evangelista. As has been variously noted in this volume, modern Swinburne criticism dates from Cecil Lang’s magisterial The Swinburne Letters and, in some respects, from his groundbreaking introduction, which judiciously and even presciently identified the canon that would become central to subsequent criticism and to a much desired Swinburne revival. I do not have space here to conduct a full review of that revival, but before considering the function of Swinburne criticism at the present time, I will note some of the major trends that continue to influence Swinburne studies at the centenary of his death. Serious and extended criticism of Swinburne’s poetry began with John D. Rosenberg’s groundbreaking appreciation of the poet in his 1967 Victorian Studies article, and continued soon after in Rosenberg’s attempt to extend Swinburne’s audience with the excellent Modern Library edition of Selected Poetry and Prose, where he declared Swinburne to be “probably the most important unread poet in England today” (v). Rosenberg was then followed by the fine essays in a special edition of Victorian Poetry edited by Lang in 1971, and by Jerome McGann’s brilliant and still unsurpassed Swinburne: An Experiment in Criticism in 1972. Inevitably Swinburne studies slowed after this astonishing burst of activity, but fresh perspectives have continued to emerge as scholars absorbed and extended this early work, and made Swinburne’s writing more accessible to general readers as new modes of critical inquiry have arisen, particularly gender and sexuality studies, but also new historicist and poststructuralist approaches. The most significant new editions of Swinburne’s work include two selections that offer important revaluations of Swinburne’s writings in their introductions, and make readily available much of the canon described by Lang, as well as other works: Catherine Maxwell’s Algernon Charles Swinburne (1997) and the more recent and much fuller Major Poems and Selected Prose, edited by McGann and Charles L. Sligh (2004). ¹ Much more of Swinburne’s writings is becoming available through the use of new technologies on the Web in The Swinburne Project headed by John Walsh <https://www.swinburneproject.org/" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">https://www.swinburneproject.org/>.