Public domain photo of Alfred Lord Tennyson

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

A selective list of online literary criticism for the nineteenth-century Victorian poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, with links to reliable biographical and introductory material and signed, peer-reviewed, and scholarly literary criticism.

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Introduction, Biography, Multimedia [all free]

"Alfred, Lord Tennyson." Poetry Foundation. Good, encyclopedia-type introduction to Alfred, Lord Tennyson, his biography, themes, and techniques, with samples of his poems.

"Alfred Tennyson." Poetry Archive. Directors, Andrew Motion & Richard Carrington.

A biography of Tennyson, and a review of Tennyson, a biography by Peter Levi. By Betty Abel in Contemporary Review (1993).

"Alfred Tennyson." The Victorian Web. Ed. George P. Landow. Essays on Tennyson's writing technique, themes, biography, and the Victorian background.

"The Charge of the Light Brigade." Sound recording of Tennyson reading, recorded on wax cylinders in 1890. BBC.

"Why 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' Still Matters." BBC News Online Magazine, 25 Oct. 2004.

The Charge of the Light Brigade. Video clip from the 1936 movie with Errol Flynn. "What a tactical blunder. The fools. Why they're riding to certain death!" YouTube.

"Julia Margaret Cameron and Alfred Lord Tennyson." Pictures by the noted photographer (who was a neighbor and friend of Tennyson) for Idylls of the King. Graphic Arts Division, Princeton U.

"Farringford and Tennyson." Photos of Farringford House, Tennyson's home in Freshwater, Isle of Wight, where he moved in 1853 and lived until his death. "Isle of Wight: Anyone for Tennyson?" Farringford House is now a hotel. Telegraph, 9 Sept. 2003.

"Alfred, Lord Tennyson's house for sale: Offers above £10 million accepted." UK Telegraph, 16 Sept. 2008. Aldworth House, Tennyson's summer home in Black Down, near Haslemere in Surrey, which he built in 1868. Photo of Aldworth House.

"Bayons Manor." Lost Heritage. Photos of the English country house that was extravagantly expanded by Tennyson's uncle, Charles D'Eyncourt, and is now demolished.

Literary Criticism

Barton, Anna Jane. "Letters, Scraps of Manuscript, and Printed Poems: the Correspondence of Edward FitzGerald and Alfred Tennyson." Victorian Poetry (2008) [subscription service].

Bevis, Matthew. "Tennyson, Ireland, and 'The Powers of Speech.'" Victorian Poetry 39, 3 (Fall 2001) pp. 345-364 [first page of article only, blurred].

Blair, Kirstie. Publisher's blurb for Victorian Poetry and the Culture of the Heart (Oxford UP 2006). Includes chapter on Tennyson, "'Raving of dead men's dust and beating hearts': Tennyson and the Pathological Heart." Reviewed in Review of English Studies [first page of article only]. Reviewed at The British Society for Literature and Science.

Brunner, Larry. "'I Sit as God': Aestheticism and Repentance in Tennyson's 'The Palace of Art.'" Renascence (2003) [subscription service].

Campbell, Matthew. Publisher's site, which includes an excerpt, for Rhythm and Will in Victorian Poetry (Cambridge UP 1999). Covers Tennyson, Robert Browning, Gerard Maley Hopkins and Thomas Hardy. Cambell studies the concern of these four Victorian poets with questions of human agency and will. Says the blurb, "The Victorians saw the virtues attendant upon a strong will as central to themselves and to their culture, and Victorian poetry strove to find an aesthetic form to represent this sense of the human will. Through close study of the metre, rhyme and rhythm of a wide range of poems - including monologue, lyric and elegy - Campbell reveals how closely technical questions of poetics are related, in the work of these poets, to issues of psychology, ethics and social change."

Caws, Mary Ann, and Gerhard Joseph. "Naming and Not Naming: Tennyson and Mallarme." On Tennyson and French Symbolist poetry. Victorian Poetry 43 (2005) [subscription service].

Celikkol, Ayse. "Dionysian Music, Patriotic Sentiment, and Tennyson's Idylls of the King." Victorian Poetry (2007) [subscription service].

Cheshire, Jim; and Colin Ford, John Lord, Leonee Ormond, Ben Stoker and Julia Thomas. Publisher's blurb for Tennyson Transformed. Lund Humphries, 2009. Art book on Tennyson and the visual arts, covering book illustration, photography, engraving and sculpture; includes previously unpublished archival material, essays by leading specialists in the field and a catalogue of seminal objects and images.

Devereux, Cecily. "Canada and the Epilogue to the Idylls: 'The Imperial Connection' in 1873." Devereux examines Tennyson's attitude towards British Imperialism in Canada in the conclusion of Idylls of the King. Victorian Poetry 36, 2 (Summer 1998) [first page of article only, blurred].

Douglas-Fairhurst, Robert. Blurb at publisher's site for Victorian Afterlives: The Shaping of Influence in Nineteenth-Century Literature (Oxford UP 2004). Includes the chapter "Tennyson's Sympathy."

Dransfield, Scott. "The Morbid Meters of Maud." Victorian Poetry 46, 3 (Fall 2008) [subscription service].

Fisher, Devon. "Spurring an imitative will: the canonization of Arthur Hallam." Christianity and Literature Winter 2006 [free].

Gray, Erik. "'Out of me, out of me!': Andrea, Ulysses, and Victorian Revisions of Egotistical Lyric." Gray looks at Victorian responses to the problem of the lyric "I," focusing on Browning's "Andrea Del Sarto" and Tennyson's "Ulysses." Victorian Poetry 36, 4 (Winter 1998) [first page of article only, blurred].

Gray, Erik. "Getting it wrong in 'The Lady of Shalott.'" Victorian Poetry 47, 1(2009) pp. 45-59 [summary only].

Harland, Catherine R. "Interpretation and Rumor in Tennyson's 'Merlin and Vivien.'" Harland contends that "Merlin and Vivien" embodies conflicting aspects of Tennyson's poetic identity. Victorian Poetry 35, 1 (Spring 1996) [first page of article only, blurred].

Hill, Marylu. "'Shadowing Sense at War with Soul': Julia Margaret Cameron's Photographic Illustrations of Tennyson's Idylls of the King." Victorian Poetry 40, 4 (Winter 2002) [first page of article only].

Hughes, John. "'Hang There Like Fruit, My Soul': Tennyson's Feminine Imaginings." Victorian Poetry 45, 2 (Summer 2007). Says Hughes, "two aspects of the self, male and female, are separate but in constant circulation in Tennyson's work" [subscription service.]

Inboden, Robin. "The 'Valour of delicate women': The Domestication of Political Relations in Tennyson's Laureate Poetry." On Tennyson's attitudes about gender in his later poetry. Victorian Poetry 36, 2 (Summer 1998) [first page of article only, blurred].

Jackson, Jeffrey E. "The Once and Future Sword: Excalibur and the Poetics of Imperial Heroism in Idylls of the King.'" Victorian Poetry 46, 2 (Summer 2008) [subscription service].

Joseph, Gerhard. "Producing the 'Far-Off Interest of Tears': Tennyson, Freud, and the Economics of Mourning." On In Memoriam. Victorian Poetry 36, 2 (Summer 1998) [first page of article only, blurred].

Killham, John, ed. Critical Essays on the Poetry of Tennyson (Routledge 1960). Contents: Tennyson, A Review of Modern Criticism, by John Killham; The Age of Tennyson, by G. M. Young; Tennyson as a Modern Poet, by Arthur J. Carr; Tennyson and Picturesque Poetry, by H. M. McLuhan; Tennyson and the Romantic Epic, by H. M. McLuhan; Tennyson's Garden of Art: A Study of "The Hesperides," by G. Robert Stange; Symbolism in Tennyson's Minor Poems, by Elizabeth Hillman Waterston; The "high-born maiden" Symbol in Tennyson, by Lionel Stevenson; Tennyson's Mythology: A study of "Demeter and Persephone," by G. Robert Strange; The Dilemma of Tennyson, by W. W. Robson; Tennyson's "Ulysses": A Re-interpretation, by E. J. Chiasson; The Motivation of Tennyson's Weeper, by Cleanth Brooks; "Tears, Idle Tears," by Graham Hough; "Tears, Idle Tears" Again, by Leo Spitzer; In Memoriam, by T. S. Eliot; Tennyson's "Maud": The Function of the Imagery, by John Killham; Tennyson's Idylls, by F. E. L. Priestley. The complete book is available full-text at the Internet Archive [free].

Landow, George P. "In Search of the Light Brigade: An Important Resource for Anyone Interested in the Crimean War." The Victorian Web. Ed. George P. Landow [free].

Mansell, Darrel. "Displacing Hallam's Tomb in Tennyson's In Memoriam." Mansell examines why Tennyson made errors of fact about Arthur Henry Hallam's death. Victorian Poetry 36, 1 (Spring 1998) [first page of article only, blurred].

McSweeney, Kerry. "Performing 'The Solitary Reaper' and 'Tears, Idle Tears' - Interpretive Versus Aesthetic Literary Criticism" [and William Wordsworth] Criticism (1996) [free].

Phillips, Catherine. "'Charades from the Middle Ages'? Tennyson's Idylls of the King and the Chivalric Code." Victorian Poetry 40, 3 (Fall 2002) [subscription service].

Ruderman, D. B. "The Breathing Space of Ballad: Tennyson's Stillborn Poetics." Victorian Poetry 47, 1 (Spring 2009). On Tennyson's poetic fragment to his stillborn son [subscription service].

Shaw, Marion. "Alfred, Lord Tennyson." Literary Encyclopedia. 17 July, 2001. Eds. Robert Clark, Emory Elliott, Janet Todd. An introduction to Tennyson, from a well-edited online database that provides signed literary criticism by experts in their field, and is available to individuals for a reasonably-priced subscription [subscription service].

Taylor, Dennis. "Tennyson's Catholic Years: A Point of Contact." Victorian Poetry 47, 1 (Spring 2009). On Tennyson's Catholic friends and his interest in Catholicism [subscription service].

Tomko, Michael. "Varieties of Geological Experience: Religion, Body, and Spirit in Tennyson's In Memoriam and Lyell's Principles of Geology." Victorian Poetry 42, 2 (Summer 2004) [subscription service].

Weinfield, Henry. "'Of Happy Men That Have the Power to Die': Tennyson's 'Tithonus.'" Victorian Poetry (2009) [subscription service].

Woodworth, Elizabeth. "Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Coventry Patmore, and Alfred Tennyson on Napoleon III: The Hero-Poet and Carlylean Heroics." Victorian Poetry 44, 4 (Winter 2006) [subscription service].

Wright, Jane Cooke. "A Reflection on Fiction and Art in 'The Lady of Shalott.'" Victorian Poetry (2003) [subscription service].

Web Sites [all free]

"Alfred Tennyson." Ed. Patrick Scott. Exhibition of books and manuscripts, includes explanatory essays. Contents: Introduction; Tennyson, Lincolnshire, and the Romantic Legacy; Tennyson, Interpreter of Mid-Victorian Britain; Tennyson and Religion; Tennyson's Arthurian Epic; Tennyson and the Victorian Publishing Revolution. Thomas Cooper Library, U of South Carolina.

"The Camelot Project." Eds. Alan Lupack and Barbara Tepa Lupack. Arthurian texts, images, bibliographies. U of Rochester.

"The Tennyson Society." The Tennyson Society, in Lincoln, is an active organization that holds regular and special events for its members and publishes the peer-reviewed journal The Tennyson Research Bulletin.

Victorian Studies. Published by Indiana Univ. Press.

Nineteenth Century Studies. Nineteenth Century Studies Association. Ed. David C. Hanson. Information about the scholarly journal and sample articles.

"Darwin Correspondence Project." Eds. Jim Secord, Janet Browne. Online database of Charles Darwin's correspondence. The Darwin Correspondence Project was begun in 1974 by Frederick Burkhardt with the aid of zoologist Sydney Smith. It is now a searchable, online, open access database that includes complete transcripts of Darwin's letters and letters written to him, staffed by researchers and editors based in the UK at Cambridge University Library, home of the largest existing collection of Darwin's manuscripts, and in the US.

"Victorianism." The Victorian Web. Ed. George P. Landow. Essays topics include Victorianism as a Fusion of Neoclassical and Romantic Ideas; The Complex Realities of Victorianism; Main Currents in Victorian Intellectual History; The Fundamental Conflicts of Victorian Poetry; Density and Elaborate Interconnectedness of High and Late Victorian Culture; The Difficulties of Victorian Poetry; Victorian Doubt and Victorian Architecture; Victorian Taste; Victorian Design; Race in Thought and Science; Victorian Earnestness; The Seaside in the Victorian Literary Imagination; Tennyson and Victorianism; The Victorian Gentleman; Crisis of Organized Religion; and Queen Victoria.

"Monuments and Dust." Eds. Michael Levenson, David Trotter, Anthony Wohl. IATH, U of Va. A project by an international group of scholars who are creating a complex visual, textual, and statistical representation of Victorian London.

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