A highly successful literary figure in his day, Algernon Swinburne (1837-1909) was descended from an English baronet and distinguished himself at Oxford with his precocious literary skill before being expelled for supporting anti-royalist causes. He scandalized Victorian England with his early poetry about lesbian sex, cannibalism, and sexual masochism. He was in fact a sexual masochist, though many observers doubted he was as much the deviant as he pretended. After being saved from alcoholism at age 41, the quality of his poetry steadily declined, as he concentrated more on criticism and politics.