Public domain photo of Alfred Lord Tennyson

Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

Main Page | 19th-Century Literature | British Poets | Tennyson's First Editions

Literary Criticism

Barton, Anna Jane. "Letters, scraps of manuscript, and printed poems: the correspondence of Edward FitzGerald and Alfred Tennyson." Victorian Poetry, Spring 2008.

Bevis, Matthew. Tennyson, Ireland, and "The Powers of Speech." Victorian Poetry, Fall 2001.

Brunner, Larry. "'I Sit as God': Aestheticism and Repentance in Tennyson's 'The Palace of Art,'" Renascence, Fall 2003.

Campbell, Matthew J.B. On Victorian heroism and "Oenone." In Rhythm and Will in Victorian Poetry (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1999). Preview at Google Books.

Caws, Mary Ann; and Joseph, Gerhard. "Naming and not naming: Tennyson and Mallarme." On Tennyson and French Symbolist poetry. Victorian Poetry, Spring 2005.

Celikkol, Ayse. "Dionysian music, patriotic sentiment, and Tennyson's Idylls of the King." Victorian Poetry, Fall 2007.

Cheshire, Jim. "Alfred Lord Tennyson and Visual Culture." On illustrations of "The Lady of Shalott," photography and "The Charge of the Light Brigade," and Julia Margaret Cameron's creative interpretation of Tennyson's medievalist poetry. From The Role of the Humanities in Design Creativity International Conference, 2007.

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on Tennyson and the visual arts, covering book illustration, photography, engraving and sculpture; includes previously unpublished archival material, essays by leading specialists in the field and a catalogue of seminal objects and images.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

Cronin, Richard. On the composition of "Oenone." In Romantic Victorians: English Literature, 1824-1840 (Macmillan, 2002). Preview at Google Books.

Dransfield, Scott. "The morbid meters of Maud." Victorian Poetry, Fall 2008.

Fulweiler, Howard W. "The Love Song of Alfred Tennyson: The Victorian 'Girl' and the Growth of the Poet's Mind." In "Here a Captive Heart Busted": Studies in the Sentimental Journey of Modern Literature. On sentimentality in Tennyson in "Mariana," "The Lady of Shallot," and "Oenone." (Fordham Univ. Press, 1993). Preview at Google Books.

Gray, Erik. "Getting it wrong in 'The Lady of Shalott,'" Victorian Poetry, Spring 2009.

Hill, Marylu. "Shadowing sense at war with soul": Julia Margaret Cameron's photographic illustrations of Tennyson's Idylls of the King. Victorian Poetry, Winter 2002.

Hughes, John. "'Hang there like fruit, my soul': Tennyson's feminine imaginings." How "two aspects of the self, male and female, are separate but in constant circulation in Tennyson's work." Victorian Poetry, Summer 2007.

Jackson, Jeffrey E. "The once and future sword: Excalibur and the poetics of imperial heroism in 'Idylls of the King.'" Victorian Poetry, Summer 2008.

Jordan, Elaine. On "Oenone," Monologues and Metonymy, in Alfred Tennyson (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1988). From Google Books.

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

Levi, Peter. A review of Levi's biography of Tennyson (Tennyson, Scribners 1993). Reviewed in Contemporary Review, June 1993, by Betty Abel.

Mazzeno, Laurence W. Alfred Tennyson: The Critical Legacy (Boydell & Brewer, 2004). Preview at Google Books.

Martin, Robert Bernard. A review of Martin's biography of Tennyson (Tennyson: The Unquiet Heart). Reviewed by Christopher Ricks in Essays in Appreciation. At Google Books.

McSweeney, Kerry. "Performing 'The Solitary Reaper' and 'Tears, Idle Tears.' - interpretive versus aesthetic literary criticism." Criticism, Spring, 1996.

Mustard, Wilfred Pirt. On "The Death of Oenone" and Quintus Smynraeus. In Classical Echoes in Tennyson (1904). At Google Books.

Pearsall, D.J. "'Oenone' and the Judgement of Paris." In Tennyson's Rapture: Transformation in the Victorian Dramatic Monologue (Oxford Univ. Press, 2007). Preview at Google Books.

Phillips, Catherine. "Charades from the Middle Ages"? Tennyson's Idylls of the King and the chivalric code. Victorian Poetry, Fall 2002.

Ricks, Christopher. "Tennyson's Tennyson," Essays in Appreciation (Oxford Univ. Press, 1998). Preview at Google Books.

Riede, David. Chapter on Tennyson covers "Tears, Idle Tears," "Mariana," "The Lady of Shalott," "The Palace of Art," "Ulysses," "Locksley Hall," "Fatima," "A Dream of Fair Women," "Maud," and more. In Allegories of One's Own Mind: Melancholy in Victorian Poetry (Ohio State University Press, 2005). Preview at Google Books.

Ruderman, D. B. "The breathing space of ballad: Tennyson's stillborn poetics" [poem fragment to his stillborn son]. Victorian Poetry, Spring 2009.

Shaw, Marion. A substantial introduction to Alfred Lord Tennyson, from the Literary Encyclopedia.

Sinfield, Alan. On dramatic monologue in "Oenone." Dramatic Monologue (Taylor and Francis, 1977). Preview at Google Books.

Taylor, Dennis. "Tennyson's Catholic years: a point of contact" [Tennyson's Catholic friends and interest in Catholicism]. Victorian Poetry, Spring 2009.

Tomko, Michael. "Varieties of geological experience: religion, body, and spirit in Tennyson's In Memoriam and Lyell's Principles of Geology." Victorian Poetry, Summer 2004.

Woodworth, Elizabeth. "Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Coventry Patmore, and Alfred Tennyson on Napoleon III: The Hero-Poet and Carlylean Heroics." Victorian Poetry, Winter 2006.

Wright, Jane Cooke. "A reflection on fiction and art in 'The Lady of Shalott.'" Victorian Poetry, Summer 2003.

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 Volume 36, no. 2, Summer 1998 (removed).

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, Vol. 36, no. 4, Winter 1998 (removed).

Harland, Catherine R. "Interpretation and Rumor in Tennyson's Merlin and Vivien." Harland contends that Merlin and Vivien embody conflicting aspects of Tennyson's poetic identity and the problematic relationship of language and gender. In Victorian Poetry, Volume 35, no. 1, Spring 1996 (removed)

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, Volume 36, no. 2, Summer 1998 (removed).

Joseph, Gerhard. "Producing the 'Far-Off Interest of Tears': Tennyson, Freud, and the Economics of Mourning." On In Memoriam. Victorian Poetry, Volume 36, no. 2, Summer 1998 (removed).

Lang, Andrew. Alfred Tennyson (Blackwood, 1901) A commentary written in 1901 (complete book) from ebooks at University of Adelaide Library (moved or removed).

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. In Victorian Poetry, Volume 36, no. 1, Spring 1998 (removed).

Introduction, Photos, Multimedia & Lighter Reading

"Why the Charge of the Light Brigade still matters," BBC News Online Magazine, 10/25/04.

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

George Landow's Victorian Web has essays on Tennyson's writing techniques, themes, biography, and the Victorian background.

Julia Margaret Cameron's photographs, for Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, online exhibition from Graphic Arts Division, Princeton Univ.

Older criticism of Tennyson's major and minor works and a biography, from The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907-21).

Aldworth House, Tennyson's home in Blackdown, Sussex, for sale in 2008. Article from the UK Telegraph. Photo of Aldworth House

Photos of Farringford House, Tennyson's home in Freshwater, Isle of Wight. He moved there in 1853. Now a hotel, article in UK Telegraph.

Photos of Bayons Manor, the now-demolished English country house extravagantly expanded by Tennyson's uncle Charles Tennyson D'Eyncourt.

Photos of the town of Tealby, the location of Bayons Manor.

The original manuscript of Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade," from the University of Virginia Special Collections Dept., and the poem coded in TEI.

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

Statue depicting Tennyson's Oenone by Harriet Hosmer (1854).

Victorianism

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." 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; Queen Victoria. From George Landow's Victorian Web

Douglas-Fairhurst, Robert. Victorian Afterlives: The Shaping of Influence in Nineteenth-Century Literature (Oxford Univ. Press, 2004). Publisher's site. At Google Books.

Drescher, Seymour. The Mighty Experiment: Free Labor versus Slavery in British Emancipation (Oxford Univ. Press). By an important scholar of nineteenth century slavery and abolition, outlines the relationship of economic growth and moral issues in regard to slavery.

Ebbatson, Roger and Ann Donahue. An imaginary England: nation, landscape and literature, 1840-1920 (Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2005). At Google Books.

Kreilkamp, Ivan. Voice and the Victorian storyteller (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2005). Publisher's site. At Google Books.

Leighton, Angela. Victorian women poets: writing against the heart (Univ. of Virginia Press, 1992). At Google Books.

Ricks, Christopher. Allusion to the Poets (Oxford Univ. Press, 2004). Publisher's site. At Google Books.

Shires, Linda M., ed. Rewriting the Victorians: theory, history, and the politics of gender (Taylor & Francis, 1992). At Google Books.

Dyos, H. J. and Michael Wolff. The Victorian City: Images and Realities (1973; rpt. 1999). At Google Books.

"Monuments and Dust," a project by an international group of scholars who are creating a complex visual, textual, and statistical representation of Victorian London.

A guide to Victorian research resources from the VICTORIA discussion list for Victorian Studies.

Main Page | 19th-Century Literature | British Poets | Tennyson's First Editions

1998-2009 by Jan Pridmore