Person    | Male  Born 5/4/1837  Died 10/4/1909

Algernon Charles Swinburne

Categories: Poetry

Born 7 Chester Street, Chelsea. Poet associated with the Pre-Raphaelites. He invented the poetic form called ‘roundel’. Was a good friend of Dante Rossetti, who called him his ’little Northumbrian friend’ as Swinburne had adopted Northumberland as his native county and was just over five feet tall.

Staying with his homosexual lover, George Powell, at Entretat (near Dieppe) Swinburne had a near-death experience swimming off the beach when he was swept out to sea. His rescue by a fishing vessel was witnessed (possibly assisted) by Guy de Maupassant who thus got to know Swinburne and Powell. He described his visits to their cottage on a number of occasions and the abode does seem very bizarre: on display were piles of bones and a flayed hand (the fingers of which Powell kept sucking), supposedly of a patricide. A large pet monkey was noisily present. After lunch pornographic German photographs were brought out for the boastfully heterosexual Maupassant's enjoyment. Afterwards he wrote: "If genius is a kind of delirium of the higher intelligence then Swinburne is assuredly a genius". The genius died at 11 Putney Hill.

Credit for this entry to: Alan Patient of www.plaquesoflondon.co.uk

Comments are provided by Facebook, please ensure you are signed in here to see them

This section lists the memorials where the subject on this page is commemorated:
Algernon Charles Swinburne

Commemorated ati

Rose and Crown, Wimbledon

The Rose and Crown - one of Wimbledon's oldest public houses, dating from the...

Read More

Rossetti & Swinburne

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1828 - 1882, and Algernon Charles Swinburne, 1837 - 1...

Read More

Swinburne & Watts-Dunton

L.C.C. Algernon Charles Swinburne, (1837-1909), -poet-, and his friend, Theod...

Read More

This section lists the memorials created by the subject on this page:
Algernon Charles Swinburne

Creations i

Rossetti fountain

Unveiled by William Holman Hunt. There must have been a committee to erect th...

Read More

Other Subjects

Sir Walter Raleigh

Sir Walter Raleigh

Courtier, explorer, author and puddle-coverer.  Born Devon.  Became a favourite of Queen Elizabeth I and explored Virginia, America, for her, enabling its colonisation.  Briefly imprisoned in the T...

Person, Exploring, Poetry, Politics & Administration, Seriously Famous, USA

3 memorials
Canon Richard Watson Dixon

Canon Richard Watson Dixon

Born Islington. Ecclesiastical historian and poet. At Pembroke College, Oxford, he became one of the ‘Birmingham Group’ along with William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. He was considered for Poe...

Person, History, Poetry, Religion

1 memorial
Thomas Gray

Thomas Gray

Poet.  Born Cornhill.  Wrote ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ and the lesser-known ‘Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes’ about Horace Walpole's cat. Died Cam...

Person, Poetry

2 memorials
Sir William Empson

Sir William Empson

Poet and critic. Born near Goole, Yorkshire. Considered a great English critic, his best-known work is his first publication "Seven Types of Ambiguity" 1930. Married Hetta in 1941 and had two sons,...

Person, Poetry

2 memorials
Thomas Chatterton

Thomas Chatterton

Poet and forger of pseudo-medieval poetry. Born Bristol. Largely self-taught, read extensively and began writing verse aged 11. Became besotted with the medieval period and faked the writings of a ...

Person, Poetry

2 memorials