Alfred Austin

Austin was born in the Leeds suburb of Headingley. Father Joseph Austin is a merchant from Leeds, mother is the sister of engineer Joseph Locke, a member of parliament for Honiton. He studied at Stonyhurst and Oscott College, and graduated from the University of London in 1853. Four years later he got a job as a lawyer, worked until 1861, then devoted himself to the literary field. This year his first satire "The Season" was released.

In 1870, a collection of critical articles "The Poetry of the Period" was published, the satire of which was directed against Alfred Tennyson, Robert Browning, Matthew Arnold and Algernon Charles Swinburne. The book has caused a lot of criticism.