Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909) - photo 1

Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909)

Starting price
£ 100
Auction dateClassic
15.12.2023 11:00UTC +01:00
Auctioneer
CHRISTIE'S
Event location
United Kingdom, London
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ID 1108976
Lot 176 | Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909)
Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909)
Autograph manuscript signed ('Algernon Charles Swinburne') of his poem 'Astrophel', [1894], with five autograph letters to Sydney Cockerell, 1897-1906 and one to Thomas Purnell, 28 April [1875]
The manuscript of 'Astrophel' complete, 5 pages, 257 x 205mm, on blue paper; the letters in total 10½ pages, octavo; with envelopes, also three carte-de-visite photographs of Swinburne as a young man, an autograph manuscript by F.W. Bain 'In Memoriam A.C.S.', 1911, and a few other related items, most items annotated by Cockerell. Tipped, laid down or loosely inserted into an album, green morocco by Katharine Adams, 1904, slipcase. Provenance: The album: Sydney Cockerell (1867-1962: ownership inscription, October 1904); Christie's London, 29 April 1981, lot 201. The letter to Purnell: Christie's, 29 November 1978, lot 96.

Autograph manuscript of Swinburne's 'Astrophel', with six autograph letters. 'Astrophel' was written 'After reading Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia in the garden of an English manor-house' (Broxhead Warren, Hants): it was first published in the collection of the same name in 1894.

A star in the silence that follows
The song of the death of the sun
Speaks music in heaven, and the hollows
And heights of the world are as one;
One lyre that outsings and outlightens
The rapture of sunset, and thrills
Mute night till the sense of it brightens
The soul that it fills.

The first of the letters to Sydney Cockerell thanks him for a gift identified by Cockerell's annotation as the Kelmscott Press's Laudes Beatae Mariae Virginis, 1896: 'I can imagine Morris reading out these sonorous couplets. I have written several hymns in the same language – if mediaeval dog-Latin or priest-Latin may be called a language – but not in this striking & effective metre'. On 22 November 1922 he again refers to William Morris, praising his novel 'A Dream of John Ball'. On 5 August 1903 Swinburne responds warmly to Cockerell's account of a meeting with Leo Tolstoy, in which Tolstoy had praised Dickens's creation of living characters: 'The appreciation of so great a man as Tolstoy ... adds a crowning ray of glory to the fame of Dickens'. The letter of 5 October 1904 presents the manuscript of 'Astrophel' in thanks for the gift of a volume from Ben Jonson's library: 'I never keep my manuscripts but always make them over to a friend ... The poem of which I am now able to send you the manuscript is rather a favourite of mine from past associations connected with the garden described in it' . The last letter, on 11 January 1906, again acknowledges the gift of a book, and refers to Burne-Jones and Morris. The early letter to Thomas Purnell declines to write a review of Robert Browning's 'new poems' ['Aristophanes' Apology'], on the grounds that 'any criticism of the book worth writing or worth reading must be written by a first-rate Greek scholar & not by a fifth-form schoolboy smatterer like myself'. The letters to Swinburne are published in the Letters, ed. Lang (1959-62), 1713, 1762, 1793, 1810, 1826.
Address of auction CHRISTIE'S
8 King Street, St. James's
SW1Y 6QT London
United Kingdom
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SWINBURNE, Algernon Charles (1837-1909).
SWINBURNE, Algernon Charles (1837-1909).
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