Swinburne was born into an old aristocratic family. He was sent to Eton, where he acquired a taste for flagellation, and Oxford, where he became friends with Dante Gabriel Rossetti and other members of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, of which he was briefly a member. His second volume of poetry, a drama in classical style, brought him praise. Swinburne suffered a breakdown in the 1870s but continued to write, in genres ranging from lyric poetry and satire to pornography, for the remainder of his life.
Much work remains unpublished.