Many years in preparation, this first volume of Lang and Shannon's edition of Tennyson's correspondence lives up to all expectations. In a comprehensive introduction the editors present not only the biographical background, with vivid portrayals of the dramatis personae, but also the story of the manuscripts, the ones that were destroyed and the many that luckily survived. The Tennyson who emerges in this volume is not a serene or Olympian figure. He is moody, impulsive, often reckless, now full of camaraderie, now plagued by anxiety or resentment, deeply attached to close friends and family and uninterested in the social scene. His early life is unenviable: we see glimpses of the embittered, drunken father, the distraught mother, the swarm of siblings in the rectory at Somersby in Lincolnshire. The happiest period is the three years at Cambridge, terminated when his father dies, and the two years thereafter, with Arthur Hallam engaged to his sister and a frequent visitor at their house. The shock of Hallam's death in 1833, coupled with the savage attack on Tennyson's poems in the Quarterly Review, is followed by depression, bouts of alcoholism, financial problems, and gradually, in the 1840s, increasing recognition of his work. The year 1850 sees the publication of In Memoriam, his long-deferred marriage at age forty to Emily Seliwood, and his acceptance, not without misgivings, of the post of Poet Laureate. The editors have garnered and selected a large number of letters to and about Tennyson which supplement his own letters, fill in lacunae in the narrative, and reveal him to us as his friends and contemporaries saw him.

The first volume of The Letters of Alfred Lord Tennyson showed the young manbecoming a poet and recorded the experiences--out of which so much of his poetrywas forged--that culminated in three personal triumphs: marriage, In Memoriam,and the Poet Laureateship. Volume IIreveals the gradual emergence of a new anddifferent Tennyson, moving confidentlyamong the great and famous--the intellectual, political, and artistic elite--yetremaining very much a son of Lincolnshire,whose childlike simplicity of manner strikesall who meet him. As a young man, he wasobliged to be paterfamilias of his father'sfamily; now he has a family of his own,with two sons reaching manhood, twohouses, and two lives, one in London andthe other at home. Through the letters we learn somethingabout his poetry (including "Maud," andThe Idylls of the King), much abouthis dealings with publishers, and evenmore about his travels--in Scotland,Wales, Cornwall, Norway, Switzerland,Auvergne, Brittany, the Pyrenees--and itis clear that all that he met became part ofhim and of his poetry. By the close of thisvolume he is one of the two or three mostfamous names in the English-speakingliterary world. The edition includes an abundance of letters to and about Tennyson as well as byhim, and its generous annotation has beencommended by reviewers for its range andwit.

Uncovering Wordsworth's influence on TennysonThis book explores Tennyson's poetic relationship with Wordsworth through a close analysis of Tennyson's borrowing of the earlier poet's words and phrases, an approach that positions Wordsworth in Tennyson's poetry in a more centralised way than previously recognised. Focusing on some of the most representative poems of Tennyson's career, including 'The Lady of Shalott', 'Ulysses' and In Memoriam, the study examines the echoes from Wordsworth that these poems contain and the transformative part they play in his poetry, moving beyond existing accounts of Wordsworthian influence in the selected texts to uncover new and revealing connections and interactions that shed a penetrating light on Tennyson's poetic relationship with his Romantic predecessor.Key FeaturesFirst book-length study of Tennyson's poetic relationship with WordsworthBy focusing on echoes or parallel passages, book reevaluates Tennyson's poetic relationship with Wordsworth Reveals Wordsworth as the lynchpin of Tennyson's poetryRecalibrates critical estimates of Tennyson as poet, Poet Laureate and Post-Romantic poet

Until now, the study of literary allusion has focused on allusions made by poets to other poets. In Tennyson Among the Novelists, John Morton presents the first book-length account of the presence of a poet's work in works of prose fiction. As well as shedding new light on the poems of Tennyson and their reception history, Morton covers a wide variety of novelists including Thomas Hardy, James Joyce, Evelyn Waugh, and Andrew O'Hagan, offering a fresh look at their approach to writing. Morton shows how Tennyson's poetry, despite its frequent depreciation by critics, has survived as a vivifying presence in the novel from the Victorian period to the present day.

Victorian literature’s fascination with the past, its examination of social injustice, and its struggle to deal with the dichotomy between scientific discoveries and religious faith continue to fascinate scholars and contemporary readers. During the past hundred years, traditional formalist and humanist criticism has been augmented by new critical approaches, including feminism and gender studies, psychological criticism, cultural studies, and others. In Twenty-First Century Perspectives on Victorian Literature, twelve scholars offer new assessments of Victorian poetry, novels, and nonfiction. Their essays examine several major authors and works, and introduce discussions of many others that have received less scholarly attention in the past. General reviews of the current status of Victorian literature in the academic world are followed by essays on such writers as Charles Dickens, Alfred Tennyson, Thomas Hardy, and the Brontë sisters. These are balanced by essays that focus on writing by women, the development of the social problem novel, and the continuity of Victorian writers with their Romantic forebears. Most importantly, the contributors to this volume approach Victorian literature from a decidedly contemporary scholarly angle and write for a wide audience of specialists and non-specialists alike. Their essays offer readers an idea of how critical commentary in recent years has influenced—and in some cases changed radically—our understanding of and approach to literary study in general and the Victorian period in particular. Hence, scholars, teachers, and students will find the volume a useful survey of contemporary commentary not just on Victorian literature, but also on the period as a whole.

What did the Victorians think of Shakespeare? The twelve essays gathered here offer some answers, through close examination of works by leading nineteenth-century novelists, poets and critics including Dickens, Trollope, Eliot, Tennyson, Browning and Ruskin. Shakespeare provided the Victorians with ways of thinking about the authority of the past, about the emergence of a new mass culture, about the relations between artistic and industrial production, about the nature of creativity, about racial and sexual difference, and about individual and national identity.

A biographical and critical study of Tennyson aiming to show what went into the making of the man, exploring the power, subtlety and variety of his poems, along with the artistic principles and preoccupations which shaped his life's work.

This book is about Anglo-American literary heritage. It argues that readers on both sides of the Atlantic shaped the contours of international ‘English’ in the 1800s, expressing love for books and authors in a wide range of media and social practices. It highlights how, in the wake of American independence, the affection bestowed on authors who became international objects of celebration and commemoration was a major force in the invention of transnational ‘English’ literature, the popular canon defined by shared language and tradition. While love as such is difficult to quantify and recover, the records of such affection survive not just in print, but also in other media: in monuments, in architecture, and in the ephemera of material culture. Thus, this collection brings into view a wide range of nineteenth-century expressions of love for literature and its creators.

Drawn from over four decades of regular reviews for the Daily Telegraph, as well as pieces for Apollo, Punch and Encounter, this is a collection of Anthony Powell's critical writings.

These essays are lectures, mostly revised or expanded, given to the Tennyson Society by leading Victorianists, including one of the doyens of Tennyson studies, Jerome H. Buckley (Harvard). In Memoriam and Maud are central texts but many other poems are discussed - lyrics, dramatic monologues, narratives, ballads - and such recurrent topics as loss, the numinous, and distance in space and time. The poems are related to their intellectual context and to other poets from Wordsworth to Edward FitzGerald.