Swinburne

Students of Victorian poetry and especially students of A. C. Swinburne suffered a great loss with the passing in August 2007 of Margot K. Louis, Associate Professor at the University of Victoria. Margot's brilliance was apparent immediately from her honors thesis (on Swinburne) at Smith College in 1974 (over 174 libraries around the world have acquired it) and as she furthered her studies at Oxford and at the University of Toronto, where she earned her Ph.D.

Margot's survey in this journal of annual work in Swinburne studies bore always the hallmarks of her own undertakings and writing, perspicuous scholarship, high standards, and a generous admiration for good work. Her Swinburne and His Gods will endure as a core study of the values at the heart of Swinburne's works. Among her other publications were astute and uncommonly lucid articles in Modern Philology and Victorian Studies. Her Persephone Rises, 1860-1927: Mythography, Gender, and the Creation of a New Spirituality will be published later this year.

     Not thee, O never thee, in all time's changes           Not thee, but this the sound of thy sad soul,           The shadow of thy swift spirit, this shut scroll      I lay my hand on, and not death estranges           My spirit from communion of thy song.                                                   Ave atque Vale.