Born in London, he was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford, and attracted attention with the choruses of his Greek-style tragedy Atlanta in Calcydon (1865), and the eroticism of poems such as "Laus Veneris" (In Praise of Love), "Dolores", and "A Litany" in Poems and ballads (1866). Howevwr he and Dante Gabriel Rossetti were attacked in 1871 as leaders of the "fleshy school of poetry", and the revolutionary politics of Song before Surnrise (1871) alienated others.

Algernon Swinburne was a rebel in his youth who became an honored scholar and poet in later life. His "First Series of Poems" was shocking for its time and was withdrawn by its original publisher. The resulting notoriety made Swinburne's career.

Swinburne's tendencies toward overindulgence and self-destruction were subdued by his companion, Theodore Watts Dunton, who provided a stable home where Swinburne could write. Swinburne was a frequent contributor to "The Pearl," one of the few outlets for gay literature in Victorian England.

Many of his writings remain unpublished, presumably unpublishable...

In fact Algernon Swineburne was quite surely gay. His poetry was "overly sensuous" according to critics. "He and gay painter Simeon Solomon used to chase each other naked through the poet Rossetti's house."