
Luke Batterham
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SWINBURNE AND THE REVENGER'S TRAGEDY: Cyril Tourneur, whose works Swinburne is here ordering, was famous for one play only, The Revenger's Tragedy (which now, by near universal consent, is attributed instead to Middleton), and this formed the subject of some Swinburne's best-known critical writing, especially his essay published in the Nineteenth Century in March 1887 with its eulogy to 'This master work of Cyril Tourneur, the most perfect and most terrible incarnation of the idea of retribution impersonate and concentrated revenge that ever haunted the dreams of a tragic poet'. He also wrote a sonnet to him, beginning 'A sea that heaves with horror of the night'.
It seems likely that Swinburne is here ordering the edition of Tourneur by John Churton Collins published in 1878, while at the same time placing an order – by way of striking contrast – for the bucolic Randolph Caldecott's 'Graphic' Pictures issued in 1883. The letter is not published in The Swinburne Letters, edited by C.Y. Lang (1959-1962), or Uncollected Letters of Algernon Charles Swinburne, edited by Terry L. Meyers (2005).