This article discusses the presence of Algernon Charles Swinburne in French print culture between 1867 and the 1900s. In a time of substantial literary exchanges between French and Britain, Swinburne published poems written in French in Parnassian French magazines, while his reviews of Victor Hugo’s and Auguste Vacquerie’s collections of poems were immediately debated and translated into French. From the early 1870s both the republican press and some magazines discussed his writings. Arguably those discussions with their partial translations fuelled the desire for translations of his poetry which materialized at the turn of the century. A controversial poet in Britain, Swinburne presents the case of a poet that became canonical by the turn of the century.