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Alfred Lord Tennyson |
Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s first volume of poetry (1830) was greeted with enthusiasm, but his second book (1833) was panned and the years that followed were the most difficult and productive of his life. By 1850, though, his poems had won the admiration of many. He married; he succeeded Wordsworth as Poet Laureate; and he published In Memoriam, an elegy to his close friend Arthur Hallam that was the pinnacle of Victorian verse. It also brought him enough money to buy a home in the country. With his iconic cloak, broad-brimmed hat, and booming voice, Tennyson was a charismatic personality. Made a Lord by Queen Victoria, he personified the popular image of the Great Poet—and does to this day. But in his last years, the public appetite shifted away from the long narrative works he did so well and turned to the novel, and to its great practitioner, Charles Dickens.
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Immortal Poets: Their Lives and Verse, by Christopher Burns |