My essay on Edmund Gosse’s malign influence on Swinburne studies, both biographical and critical, is now available on the website of the International Walter Pater Society. ‘“A Genius for Inaccuracy”: Edmund Gosse and the Case of Swinburne’s Missing Musical “Ear”’ overturns… Read More ›
The Routledge Handbook of Victorian Scandals in Literature and Culture contains thirty essays exploring some of the Victorian era’s greatest moral infractions, titillations, and transgressions. Published earlier this year and edited by Brenda Ayres and Sarah E. Maier, it contains… Read More ›
The following post is related to my article ‘Swinburne, Wagner, Eliot, and the Musical Legacy of Poems and Ballads’ in the Journal of Victorian Culture. In addition to the piece by Francis Hueffer below, if you want to hear the… Read More ›
When I started this project, I would not have imagined Swinburne’s languid ‘The Garden of Proserpine’ from Poems and Ballads, First Series (1866) ever inspiring popular music, and certainly not the tone of this piece by Charles Paston-Cooper (1867-1941). Weary… Read More ›
This is a great rendition of Swinburne’s ‘A Match’ from Poems and Ballads, First Series (1866), by Louis Napoleon Parker (1852-1944). It manages to be sweetly melodic, dramatic and rousing at the same time, with a twist at the line,… Read More ›
This was the first piece of music to be inspired by one of Swinburne’s poems. From 1867, Walter Maynard’s Kissing Her Hair takes its name from the first line of Swinburne’s ‘Rondel‘, from Poems and Ballads (1866). Maynard was the pseudonym of Thomas W. Beale (1828-1894), a… Read More ›
Composed by Adela Maddison (a.k.a. Mrs Brunning Maddison, 1862-1929), from Twelve Songs (Op. 9, No. 3), 1895, London: Metzler & Co. This is a really terrific adaption, translation, or perhaps transmutation of Swinburne’s text. Moody, elemental, maybe it’s music that’s playing poetic and… Read More ›
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