Background

Alfred Austin was born on May 30, 1835, in Headingley, near Leeds, to Roman Catholic parents Joseph and Mary Austin. His father was a merchant and a magistrate of Headingley and his mother was the sister of Joseph Locke, a member of Parliament and a civil engineer.

Education

Austin was schooled first at Stoneyhurst College and then St. Mary’s College, Oscott. He received a B.A. in 1853 from the University of London.

Career

Called to the Bar of the Inner Temple in 1857, he became a barrister on the Northern Circuit at his parents urging but left the legal world within three years in pursuit of a career in literature. This decision came upon the heels of his father’s death in 1861 and his newfound financial freedom with the assumption of an inheritance. In 1855, he published Randolph: A Poem in Two Cantos, and three years later, he published a novel, entitled Five Years of It. From 1866 to 1896, he worked as a foreign affairs writer for the London Standard, where he was known as a conservative journalist.

He also was a frequent contributor to the Quarterly Review. He represented the Standard in Rome during the sittings of the Ecumenical Council of the Vatican. He was the Standard’s special correspondent at the headquarters of the King of Prussia during the Franco-German War in 1870 and also served as the German correspondent at the Congress of Berlin in 1884.

He founded the National Review in 1883 with William John Courthope and remained an energetic joint-editor for the journal until 1893, and then continued as its sole editor from 1887, when Courthope retired, until 1895. He had unsuccessful candidacies for Parliament as a Conservative for Taunton in 1865, and again for Dewsbury in 1880.

Austin’s surprising ascension to the status of poet laureate in 1896, following Tennyson, was probably more due to his stature as a journalist for the conservative party rather than his skill as a poet.

Apparently, the logical candidacies of Swinburne and Kipling were deemed unacceptable to Queen Victoria. His appointment was made at the recommendation of Prime Minister Lord Salisbury and was seen as a decision concerning Conservative Party patronage, as Austin had served that party well in his journalistic writings. Austin’s appointment negatively affected the prestige of the laureateship.

Austin died of unknown causes at Swinford Old Manor, Hothfield, near Ashford, Kent, England, where he had been ill for some time.

Achievements

• Although Alfred Austin was educated in law, his professional life focused primarily on literature. Austin published regularly for half a century and succeeded Alfred, Lord Tennyson as poet laureate of England in 1896. Nonetheless, he carries the reputation of having been the worst and least read English poet.
  
  Austin’s only popular book, The Garden that I Love (1894), was considered to be his best work and was thoroughly enjoyed by the public at the time.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Garden That I Love, Second Series
  • Prince Lucifer
  • The Bridling of Pegasus Prose Papers on Poetry
  • Love's Widowhood and Other Poems
  • Albert Victor Duke of Clarence and Avondale
  • Spring and Autumn in Ireland
  • The Poet's Diary
  • Skeletons At The Feast, Or, The Radical Programme
  • Lyrical Poems
  • At the Gate of the Convent, and Other Poems
  • The Bridling of Pegasus: Prose Papers on Poetry
  • The Tower of Babel; a Celestial Love-Drama
  • The Conversion of Winckelmann, and Other Poems
  • Jessie's expiation. A novel Volume 1
  • Jessie's expiation. A novel Volume 2

• Other Work

  • Jessie's expiation. A novel Volume 3

Politics

Foreign politics was one of Austin’s major interests. He had a special enthusiasm for Polish and Italian patriots. His hatred of Russia made him a steadfast devotee of Disraeli.

Views

Austin saw narrative and dramatic verse as the height of poetic expression and believed that Shakespeare and Milton were exemplars of these styles and worthy of imitation. He codified these criticisms in The Poetry of the Period, which was published in 1869 in Temple Bar and appeared the following year in book form. In this work, he attacked highly accomplished and widely respected authors, including Browning, Swinburne, Tennyson and Whitman, seeing them as “feminine” and “essentially childish.” It was the audacity, rather than the substance, of these claims that distinguished Austin at the time. Yet his attack on Tennyson included some astute

observations that revealed some of the great poet’s weaknesses.

Personality

Alfred Austin was a writer who wore several hats throughout his career.

Although Austin's writing was inspired and shaped by the works of Byron and Scott, Austin was actually a mediocre poet and was the target of much derision. He was most often parodied for his ode on the Jameson Raid, in which he praised what turned out to be military disaster and embarrassment for the British government.

Some critics believed that Austin, while generally acknowledged to be an untalented writer, did not deserve the opprobrium heaped upon him. In addition to his capable bucolic verses, his early satire, The Season, is a noteworthy piece of heroic poetry. However, its poor critical reception by the Athenaeum induced Austin to compose a sequel attacking the journal and its editor, William Hepworth Dixon.

Quotes from others about the person

• "Austin was appointed over the heads of abler men because of sins he had not committed.” - A writer for British Authors of the Nineteenth Century
  
  “Austin’s self- complacency appears in the record of his influence with political leaders. He possessed a divine satisfaction with his own position and a bland unconsciousness of contemporary feeling and opinion.” - Stuart P. Sherman
  
  “Austin’s philosophy and its sentimental setting are patiently planned on the Tennysonian model, but unhappily it is not enough to succeed a poet in order to be successful in imitating him.” - a critic for the Athenaeum

Interests

• Politicians

  Benjamin Disraeli

Connections

On November 14, 1865, Austin married Hester Jane Homan-Mulock.

Father:

Joseph Austin

Mother:

Mary Austin

Wife:

Hester Homan-Mulock

References

• British Authors of Nineteenth Century
• DLB 35: Victorian Poets After 1850