ABSTRACT
Volume 1 of Terry Meyers’ excellent edition of the Uncollected Letters of Algernon Charles Swinburne gives us the poet’s explicit statement of his views on women’s literary and other abilities. In a letter Meyers dates to September 19, 1874, Swinburne discusses with his correspondent, Theodore Watts-Dunton (then still Theodore Watts), the poetry of Augusta Webster (1857–1894). Midway through a less than enthusiastic critical evaluation, he breaks off to explain that
You know I do not underrate women’s powers of singing <as> or of doing any other great thing; I hold that there was a woman once on earth who sang as never man sang; ampentity I consider that Mrs Browning must remain, when all other reserves have been made, demonstrably the first English poet of her time, as having a greater spirit or genius in her than Tennyson ampentity more properly poetic than her husband’s. (Uncollected Letters 1: 328)
