'[Muir's] account of his reading material as a young man in Glasgow points to an involvement with poems of the Romantic and post-Romantic periods which were concerned both with visionary experience and with the need to transcend human suffering. He tells us: I was enchanted by The Solitary Reaper, the Ode to a Nightingale, the Ode to the West Wind, The Lotus Eaters, and the chorus from Atalanta in Calydon'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edwin Muir Print: Unknown
'Wil John Edwards...pursued Gibbon, Hardy, Swinburne and Meredith. His reading was suggested by the literary pages of the Clarion, the librarian at the Miners' Institute (who directed him to Don Quixote) and [guidance from fellow pit workers].'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wil John Edwards Print: Book
'Fine writing and realism were what John Masefield was after in prose. In poetry, it was the upsurge of feeling and rhythm first released by Swinburne. Masefield wrote in a letter to me after my first meeting with him, "Swinburne meant much to my generation: he was literary, he adored the French masters, who were then our masters in all things: he was generous beyond most poets...:he was one of the real discoverers of Blake: he could write exquisite verse in an age of exquisite verse: he laid us all at his feet with half a dozen things which I cannot read without emotion now. he was one of the first romantic poets to be read by me: and Chastelard, to a boy, is all that the heart can desire and the lines on the death of Baudelaire all that genius and grief can utter".'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield Print: Book
'Fine writing and realism were what John Masefield was after in prose. In poetry, it was the upsurge of feeling and rhythm first released by Swinburne. Masefield wrote in a letter to me after my first meeting with him, "Swinburne meant much to my generation: he was literary, he adored the French masters, who were then our masters in all things: he was generous beyond most poets...:he was one of the real discoverers of Blake: he could write exquisite verse in an age of exquisite verse: he laid us all at his feet with half a dozen things which I cannot read without emotion now. He was one of the first romantic poets to be read by me: and Chastelard, to a boy, is all that the heart can desire and the lines on the death of Baudelaire all that genius and grief can utter".'
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield Print: Book
'Brooks loved literature, and during their long walks together he introduced Willie to the most important contemporary English writers: the theological works of Cardinal Newman, the witty novels of George Meredith, the "Imaginary Portraits" of Pater, the rapturous poetry of Swinburne and Fitzgerald's sensual translation of "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: John Ellingham Brooks Print: Book
'I suppose Poems and Ballads will stand in the way of a Laureateship.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson Print: Book
'I came up from Lincolnshire to town on Monday and went down that night to Magdalen to read my Catullus, but while lying in bed on Tuesday morning with Swinburne (a copy of) was woke up by the Clerk of the Schools to know why I did not come up.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Oscar Wilde Print: Book
'When it was discovered that she liked Swinburne's poetry, Sir George demanded that she forego such sensual verse. If she had to read poetry, he pontificated, she should read Tennyson for beauty, Austin Dobson for charm, and Kipling for strength'.
Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edith Sitwell Print: Book
'Owen seems to have started reading Swinburne in earnest in 1916. When he returned to the front in 1918, knowing that he would kill and probably be killed, he took volumes of both Shelley and Swinburne with him, but after he had been in action he sent the Shelley back to Shrewsbury, keeping only Swinburne's "Poems and Ballads", the one book of poetry still in his kit at his death'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Owen Print: Book
'One late evening in the dim firelight of our rooms at Oxford after the War, she turned from reading aloud to me Swinburne's "Super Flumina Babylonis" - a favourite poem associated in her mind with war-time loss and all premature death - and opened the notebook which contained her copies of Bill's verses.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Winifred Holtby Print: Book
'Weak and tired and inclined, as always when out of action and interest, to go to pieces. Read, after twenty years, Merriman's miserable "[The] Sowers", Psalms and John iii in Arabic, some Tennyson and Swinburne, and the "Adventures of Sherlock Holmes".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Ronald Storrs Print: Book
'I have read Swinburne's "Jonson" which I will keep for you, it is quite excellent.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Gertrude Bell Print: Book
'I have been reading this week a book by Swinburne from the Library, a "Study on
Shakespeare". This is my first experience of his prose, and I think I shall make it the last. "Apt
alliteration's artful aid" may be all right in verse, but it is undoubtedly vicious in prose, as also
are words like "plenilune", "Mellisonant", "tautologous", "intromission". And yet at the same time
there is great force in the book, and his appreciation of the subject is very infectious.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Clive Staples Lewis Print: Book
'In the way of reading, I have been taking a course of "Poems and Ballads", which, with the
exception of the "Coign of a cliff" I had almost forgotten. It is rather pleasant to discover a book
which is already at home for future use.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Clive Staples Lewis Print: Book
'I have also been reading in library copies... Swinburne's "Erechtheus" which is another tragedy
on Greek lines like "Atalanta", though not so good in my opinion.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Clive Staples Lewis Print: Book
