Tennyson - Hardcover

Batchelor, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1605984906 ISBN 13: 9781605984902

Publisher: Pegasus Books, 2013

Synopsis

Alfred Lord Tennyson, Queen Victoria's favorite poet, commanded a wider readership than any other of his time. His ascendancy was neither the triumph of pure genius nor an accident of history: he skillfully crafted his own career and his relationships with his audience. Fame and recognition came, lavishly and in abundance, but the hunger for more never left him. Resolving never to be anything except 'a poet', he wore his hair long, smoked incessantly, and sported a cloak and wide-brimmed Spanish hat.Tennyson ranged widely in his poetry, turning his interests in geology, evolution and Arthurian legend into verse, but much of his work relates to his personal life. The poet who wrote The Lady of Shalott and The Charge of the Light Brigade has become a permanent part of our culture. This enjoyable and thoughtful new biography shows him as a Romantic as well as a Victorian, exploring both the poems and the pressures of his era, and the personal relationships that made the man.

About this title

About the Author

 John Batchelor is Emeritus Professor at the University of Newcastle. He was also previously a Fellow of New College, Oxford. His books include biographies of Joseph Conrad, H. G. Wells, Virginia Woolf, and John Ruskin. He lives in Newcastle.

Reviews

*Starred Review* In the poet who consoles Queen Victoria when Prince Albert dies, Batchelor recognizes the quintessential Victorian. Yet in a poet whose lyricism preserves the Romantic daring of Keats and whose personal life as a “dirty monk” makes him a social curiosity, Batchelor sees a man who transcends his age. Drawing on sources and scholarship not available when Martin published Tennyson: The Unquiet Heart (1980) and offering a broader perspective than Ormond gives in Alfred Tennyson: A Literary Life (1999), Batchelor develops a surprisingly complex portrait of an iconic writer. Readers see Tennyson become a national institution as Laureate, yet retain his regional loyalties—and Lincolnshire accent. They watch Tennyson immortalizing a dead friend in his masterpiece (In Memoriam), yet treat living friends with callous indifference. They see him serving the Crown with poems celebrating Britain’s imperial triumphs, while shocking critics with vehement attacks on Britain’s social corruption. They marvel at how a literary craftsman whose singular musical gifts sent him soaring in poetry could repeatedly stumble as a playwright. And they puzzle over the gender attitudes of a writer who echoes conventionally masculine points of view, yet also champions women’s rights. A trove of insights into the personality and literary vision of an exceptional poet. --Bryce Christensen

Edition details

• Publisher: Pegasus Books
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1605984906
• ISBN 13: 9781605984902
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 448