Algernon Swinburne was a prolific poet and passionate classicist. His tragedies are more medieval than gothic and feature women of fatal beauty. Swinburne's poetry was considered so shocking when it first appeared that one critic called him the libidinous laureate of a pack of satyrs!

Swinburne's romance Chastelard, which featured Mary Queen of Scots as a character, may have been influenced by de Sade, whom he was reading at the time.

Meredith and the Rossetti brothers were close friends and shared a house with Swinburne in Chelsea. Swinburne wrote the first study of Blake and wrote commemorating the deaths of Baudelaire, Shelley and Rossetti. He was also the friend and quondam protégé of Sir Richard Burton, who unfortunately introduced him to drink—he became an alchohic. Aleister Crowley modelled his poetry on that of Swinburne. Both he and Swinburne have been made saints of the Gnostic Catholic Church.

Oscar Wilde made these comments: It has been said of him, and with truth, that he is a master of language, but with still greater truth it may be said that language is his master....Words seem to dominate him. Alliteration tyrannizes over him. Mere sound often becomes his lord. He is so eloquent that whatever he touches becomes unreal.

The character named after George Selwyn in De Goncourt's Le Faustin seems to have be modelled in appearance and mannerisms on Swinburne.

Swinburne wrote a parody of the poet, Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton, (son of Edward George Bulwer-Lytton) who wrote under the name Owen Meredith.