Swinburne and Christina Rossetti: Atheist and Anglican

Abstract

There is no more curious friendship in nineteenth-century literary history than that of Swinburne and Christina Rossetti. They represent polar extremes in Victorian poetry, she the devoutly passionate Anglican, he the atheist whose savage attacks upon the "Galilean serpent" can still astonish and shock readers. In a frequently quoted passage Sir Edmund Gosse has told us that "neither Gabriel Rossetti, nor Mr. Swinburne, nor Mr. Morris has shown any sympathy with or any decided interest in, the tenets of Protestantism. Now Miss Christina Rossetti's poetry is not merely Christian and Protestant, it is Anglican; nor her divine works only, but her secular also, bear the stamp of uniformity with the doctrines of the Church of England." Lafourcade suggests that in reminding Swinburne of his own mother and sisters, she recalled to him the pious religious "high church" atmosphere of his home which with enlightenment was lost to him forever. Once in a letter to William Rossetti Swinburne described J.N . Neale as a shining light "in that particular uppermost 'high' branch ofthe Anglican Church to which our mothers and sisters belong."