Tennyson by Alfred Lord Tennyson

Tennyson by Alfred Lord Tennyson

A century ago Tennyson had begun to be dismissed as a poet whose work embodied everything the modern world was looking to leave behind. He still seems to readers to embody the substance of the Victorian era more fully than any other poet--but nowadays that is counted in his favor. Critics continue to find layers of complexity in poems once thought simplistic--while appreciating with fresh ears Tennyson's aural mastery.

This new edition includes the two long poems In Memoriamand Maud: A Monodramain their entirety, all the short poems for which Tennyson remains famous, and a generous selection of his lesser-known poetry, together with a concise introduction to the poet and his work, and substantial headnotes for In Memoriam, Maud, and Idylls of the King. Unlike other editions that provide a selection of Tennyson's work, this one includes both marginal glosses of obscure or archaic words and phrases, and extensive annotations at the bottom of each page. Appendices of visual material are also included.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) was a British poet. Born into a middle-class family in Somersby, England, Tennyson began writing poems with his brothers as a teenager. In 1827, he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, joining a secret society known as the Cambridge Apostles and publishing his first book of poems, a collection of juvenile verse written by Tennyson and his brother Charles. He was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal in 1829 for his poem Timbuktu and, in 1830, published Poems Chiefly Lyrical, his debut individual collection. Following the death of his father in 1831, Tennyson withdrew from Cambridge to care for his family. His second volume of poems, The Lady of Shalott (1833), was a critical and commercial failure that put his career on hold for the next decade. That same year, Tennyson's friend Arthur Hallam died from a stroke while on holiday in Vienna, an event that shook the young poet and formed the inspiration for his masterpiece, In Memoriam A.H.H. (1850). The poem, a long sequence of elegiac lyrics exploring themes of loss and mourning, helped secure Tennyson the position of Poet Laureate, to which he was appointed in 1850 following the death of William Wordsworth. Tennyson would hold the position until the end of his life, making his the longest tenure in British history. With most of his best work behind him, Tennyson continued to write and publish poems, many of which adhered to the requirements of his position by focusing on political and historical themes relevant to the British royal family and peerage. An important bridge between Romanticism and the Pre-Raphaelites, Tennyson remains one of Britain's most popular and influential poets.