Atalanta in Calydon

When the hounds of spring are on winter's traces, the wild huntress rises - and a hero rides to his doom.

First published in 1865, Atalanta in Calydon is Algernon Charles Swinburne's dazzling verse tragedy cast in the form of ancient Greek drama. It retells the myth of the Calydonian boar hunt: the fierce virgin huntress Atalanta, sworn to Artemis, draws first blood from the monstrous beast, and the young prince Meleager, who loves her, awards her the spoils - a gift that ignites his kinsmen's wrath and delivers him, by his own mother's hand, to death.

Swinburne's choruses are among the most celebrated lyric passages in English verse, from the rushing joy of "When the hounds of spring are on winter's traces" to the dark hymn "Before the beginning of years." Musical, pagan, and unrelenting, this classic of Victorian poetry set the mold for the aesthetic movement and remains a landmark of nineteenth-century tragedy in the manner of Aeschylus and Sophocles.

This is a Lightbound Library edition from Solocosmo Press, fronted by an original cover painting by Jessica von Braun.