ABSTRACT
Cecil Y. Lang's six-volume edition of the Swinburne letters has been a cornerstone of research into the poet since its appearance. Swinburne's satirical targets in his letters are attitudinal as much as textual. Swinburne's letters have chiefly been read by biographers, eager to expose their writer's psychological and sexual quirks to the public gaze. While part of the "Rossetti circle," Swinburne seems to have enjoyed being at the center of conversation, and his letters reflect the same desire to command the reader's attention using whatever materials come to hand. The letters, though, are private utterances, and Swinburne only writes in his most transgressive modes to a few like-minded individuals. In private correspondence, one might expect Swinburne to have made even bolder assaults on Victorian literary and social conventions, yet, for all their outrageous detail, the letters remain more conservative than Swinburne realized.
