As he was in his own time, Algernon Charles Swinburne is now principally esteemed as a poet rather than as a writer of prose. But during the half century of his literary career Swinburne wrote and had published a great deal of prose on a variety of topics and in several forms: fiction, a few essays on painting and history, some pornographic sketches, letters to the press on politics and literature, and, most important, books and essays of literary criticism. Most of his writing about literature appeared in periodicals addressed to general readers who wanted to keep abreast of literature and literary study just as they wanted to know about ideas and events in politics, science, and other precincts of their culture. In one of his early critical essays Swinburne wrote, "The hardest work and the highest that can be done by a critic studious of the right...