Eton

• The Poems and Letters of Digby Mackworth Dolben 1848-1867. Ed. Martin Cohen (England: Avebury, 1981).

Born April 24, 1862, to Mary Sidgwick and Edward White Benson, future archbishop of Canterbury (1882-1896), Arthur Christopher Benson became a popular essayist of Edwardian England, the librettist of England's beloved anthem, "Land of Hope and Glory," and the editor of Queen Victoria's letters. Benson received his education at Temple Grove School, East Sheen, at Eton 1874-81, and at King's College, Cambridge, 1881-84. He joined Eton in 1885 and until 1903, when he retired, was both well-liked schoolmaster and school historian. He published poetry from 1892 and essays from 1896. It was Benson's libretto for Elgar's "Coronation Ode" (1902), commissioned by the composer (perhaps at the instance of Edward VII), that brought the man of letters national fame. He left Eton in 1903 to co-edit Victoria's correspondence in 3 vols. (1907), for which he was made commander of the Royal Victorian Order. Benson then went to live in the Old Granary in Cambridge, in March 1906 to Hinton Hall at Haddenham, and last to Magdalene College, Cambridge, to which he was elected fellow in October 1904. Benson went on to become president of Magdalene in 1912 and Master in 1915. He suffered from hideous bouts of depression, first at Eton in 1882 and then in 1908-09, 1918, and 1922. In poems sometimes neglected in his later collections (such as "Courage"), Benson gave expression to this disabling trauma. He never married and was openly, if (it seems from his diaries) asexually, gay. On June 17, 1925, Benson died of a heart attack. He was remembered warmly every closing night of the London Proms at the Royal Albert Hall, which climaxed in a choric version of the patriotic "Land of Hope and Glory" -- audience joining in with performers -- until 2001, when it was withdrawn after objections from conscientious objectors to the Afghanistan war.

• Benson, Arthur C. Le Cahier Jaune: Poems. Eton: George New, 1892. PR 4099 B5C2 Robarts Library
• --. Coronation Ode, Set to Music by Edward Elgar: Book of Words. Notes by Joseph Bennett. London: Boosey, 1902. M 1533 .E38 OP. 44 Music Library
• --. Hymns and Carols. Eton: Spottiswoode, 1907.
• --. Lord Vyet and Other Poems. London and New York: John Lane, 1897. LE B474kz Robarts Library
• --. Lyrics. London: John Lane, 1895. PR 4099 B5L8 Robarts Library
• --. Monnow: An ode. Eton: Drake, 1896.
• --. Ode in Memory of the Rt. Honble. William Ewart Gladstone. Eton: Drake [privately printed], 1898.
• --. Ode to Japan. London: Chiswick Press, 1902.
• --. Peace and Other Poems. London and New York: John Lane, 1905.
• --. Poems. London: Elkin Matthews and John Lane, 1893. PR 4099 B5P6 1893 Robarts Library
• --. The Poems of A. C. Benson. London and New York: John Lane, 1909. PR 4099 B5P6 1909 Robarts Library
• --. The Professor and Other Poems. London and New York: John Lane, 1900. PR 4099 B5P7 Robarts Library
• --. Selected Poems. London: John Lane the Bodley Head, 1924. PR 4099 B5S4 Robarts Library
• --. Extracts from the letters of Dr. A.C. Benson to M.E.A. Ed. M.E. Allen. London: Jarrolds, 1926? PR 4099 .B5Z483 1926 Robarts Library
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• Hyam, R. “Benson, Arthur Christopher (1862-1925).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004.
• Henry James: Letters to A.C. Benson and Auguste Monod. Ed. E.F. Benson. London: E. Mathews and Marrot, 1930. end J354 A175 1930a Fisher Rare Book Library
• Newsome, David. On the Edge of Paradise: A. C. Benson, the Diarist. London: John Murray, 1980. PR 4099 B5Z79 1980 Robarts Library

The photograph of A. C. Benson was taken by A. H. Fry in 1899 and is published in The Diary of Arthur Christopher Benson, edited by Percy Lubbock (London: Hutchinson, [1926]).

• Chernaik, Warren. "Waller, Edmund (1606–1687)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. Oxford: OUP, 2004.

Swinburne was born April 5, 1837, in London, the child of an admiral, Captain Charles Henry Swinburne, and Lady Henrietta Swinburne. He spent his childhood at Capheaton Hall, Bonchurch, the Isle of Wight, moved on to receive his education in classics, French and Italian and metrics at Eton (1849-54) and then Balliol College, Oxford (January 1856), but eventaully left university without a degree in 1860. His first two published works were plays, The Queen Mother and Rosamond, which came out in 1861. In the years before his first triumph, Atalanta in Calydon, published in 1865, Swinburne visited Italy, where he met Walter Savage Landor, and he lived for a time in Cheyne Row, Chelsea, with D. G. Rossetti and George Meredith. In 1864 Swinburne's cousin Mary Julia Charlotte Gordon announced that she would marry (June 1865). This news much disappointed Swinburne and is perhaps reflected in poems like "Dolores." In 1865 Swinburne brought out Chastelard, a Tragedy, the first part of a Mary Queen of Scots trilogy, to be completed by Bothwell (1874), and Mary Stuart (1881). Swinburne published his greatest volume of poems, Poems and Ballads, in 1866. It contains "Dolores," "Hymn to Proserpine," "Faustine," and a dozen other dark, exquisitely musical poems. Their voice has proved unique in English poetry, but they caused an unequalled scandal by flouting accepted Victorian moral, religious and social standards. Controversy spilled over in personal attacks on his character by John Morley (Saturday Review August 4, 1866) and others. Swinburne defended his poems as art for the sake of art, and his interests in sado-masochism as impersonal, in Notes on Poems and Reviews; and W. M. Rossetti followed suit in Swinburne's Poems and Ballads: A Criticism the same year. Swinburne's later volumes of poetry less often matched the creativity of his early years. These include Song of Italy (1867), Songs before Sunrise (1871), Erechtheus (1876), Poems and Ballads, second series (1878), Tristram of Lyonesse (1882), A Century of Roundels (1883), A Midsummer Holiday (1884), Marino Faliero (1885), Locrine (1887), Poems and Ballads, third series (1889), The Sisters (1892), Astrophel (1894), The Tale of Balen (1896), Rosamund, Queen of the Lombards (1899), A Channel Passage (1904), and The Duke of Gandia (1908). In 1879 Swinburne's alcoholism caused his legal advisor and friend Walter Theodore Watts-Dunton to take him away from London to The Pines near the bottom of Putney Hill. This personal care extended Swinburne's life by 30 years, during which he wrote astute criticism of Shakespeare, Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, Blake, and Victor Hugo (cf. Essays and Studies [1875]) as well as two novels, A Year's Letters (1877), reissued in 1905 as Love's Cross Currents, and Lesbia Brandon (1952). Swinburne never married. He died 10 April 1909.

• New writings by Swinburne; or, Miscellanea nova et curiosa. Being a medley of poems, critical essays, hoaxes and burlesques, ed. Cecil Y. Lang (Syracuse: University Press, 1964; PR 5502 .L3).
• Panter-Downes, Mollie. At The Pines: Swinburne and Watts-Dunton in Putney (Boston: Gambit, 1971; PR 5513 .P3 Trinity College Library)
• Rooksby, Rikky. A. C. Swinburne: A Poet's Life (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1997; PR 5513 R66)
• --. "Swinburne, Algernon Charles (1837–1909)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. May 2009.
• Shepherd, Richard Herne. The bibliography of Swinburne: a bibliographical list, arranged in chronological order, of the published writings in verse and prose of Algernon Charles Swinburne, 1857-1883 (1883; Folcroft, Pa.: Folcroft Press, 1969; Z 8857 .S54 1969 Robarts Library)
• Swinburne, Algernon Charles. Complete Works, 20 vols., ed. Sir Edmund Gosse and T. J. Wise (London: Heinemann, 1925-27; PR 5501 .G78 Robarts Library).
• Swinburne, Algernon Charles. Letters, 6 vols., ed. Cecil Y. Lang (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959-62; PR 5513 .A32 Robarts Library)
• Wise, Thomas James. A Swinburne library : a catalogue of printed books, manuscripts and autograph letters by Algernon Charles Swinburne (London: for private circulation, 1925). BIB W813.5sw 1925 Massey College Library

• O'Neill, Michael. "Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792–1822)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. Jan. 2009.

Educator (his tenure as Assistant Master of Eton College lasted from 1845 to 1872) and author of A Guide to Modern British History (New York: Holt, 1880-82), William Johnson became William Johnson Cory after his retirement. A brief biography appears in the third edition of Ionica, his translation of classical poems, as edited by Arthur C. Benson (London: G. Allen, 1905; PR 4507 C57I6 1905 Robarts Library). Francis Warre Cornish edited a very large volume of Extracts from Letters and Journals (Oxford, 1907; Educat. B C Robarts Library).

• Card, Tim. “Cory, William Johnson (1823-1892).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004.

• Beales, Derek. “Canning, George (1770-1827).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004.