Public domain photo of Alfred Lord Tennyson

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

A selective list of literary criticism for Alfred, Lord Tennyson, favoring signed scholarly articles and books, peer-reviewed sources, and web sites that adhere to the MLA Guidelines for Web Sites.

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

Introduction, Lighter Reading, Multimedia

"Alfred, Lord Tennyson." Poetry Foundation. Ed. Catherine Halley. 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.

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.

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

"Charge of the Light Brigade." Manuscript, ll.1-17. University of Virginia Special Collections. The poem is also coded in TEI.

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

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

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

"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?" UK Telegraph, 9 Sept., 2003. Farringford House is now a hotel.

"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, 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.

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

Literary Criticism

Abel, Betty. A rev. of Tennyson, a biography by Peter Levi. Contemporary Review (1993).

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

Batchelor, John. "Alfred Tennyson: Problems of Biography." Yearbook of English Studies (2006).

Bevis, Matthew. "Tennyson, Ireland, and 'The Powers of Speech.'" Victorian Poetry (2001).

Blair, Kirstie. Victorian Poetry and the Culture of the Heart. Oxford UP, 2006. Blurb at publisher's site. Includes chapter on Tennyson, "'Raving of dead men's dust and beating hearts': Tennyson and the Pathological Heart." Rev. in Review of English Studies [first page of article only]. Rev. 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).

Campbell, Matthew. Rhythm and Will in Victorian Poetry. Cambridge UP, 1999. On Tennyson, Browning, Hopkins and Hardy "as they show a consistent and innovative concern with questions of human agency and will. 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." Publisher's site, which includes an excerpt.

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

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

Cheshire, Jim. "Alfred Lord Tennyson and Visual Culture." The Role of the Humanities in Design Creativity International Conference 2007. 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.

Cheshire, Jim, and Colin Ford, John Lord, Leonee Ormond, Ben Stoker and Julia Thomas. 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. Blurb at publisher's site.

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

Dransfield, Scott. "The Morbid Meters of Maud." Victorian Poetry (2008).

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

Hill, Marylu. "'Shadowing Sense at War with Soul': Julia Margaret Cameron's Photographic Illustrations of Tennyson's Idylls of the King." Victorian Poetry (2002).

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

Jackson, Jeffrey E. "The Once and Future Sword: Excalibur and the Poetics of Imperial Heroism in Idylls of the King.'" Victorian Poetry (2008).

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.

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

Phelan, Joseph. The Nineteenth Century Sonnet. Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Blurb from publisher's site.

Phillips, Catherine. "'Charades from the Middle Ages'? Tennyson's Idylls of the King and the Chivalric Code." Victorian Poetry (2002).

Ricks, Christopher. "Tennyson's Tennyson." A rev. of Tennyson: The Unquiet Heart, by Robert Bernard Martin. In Essays in Appreciation. Blurb from publisher's site.

Rosenberg, John D. Elegy for An Age: The Presence of the Past in Victorian Literature. Anthem Press, 2005. Chapters on Tennyson: "Stopping for Death: Tennyson’s In Memoriam," and "Tennyson and the Passing of Arthur." Rev. in Review of English Studies [first page of article only].

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

Taylor, Dennis. "Tennyson's Catholic Years: A Point of Contact." Victorian Poetry (2009). On Tennyson's Catholic friends and his interest in Catholicism.

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

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

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

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

Web sites

"Alfred Tennyson." Thomas Cooper Library, U of South Carolina. Ed. Patrick Scott. Exhibition of books and manuscripts, with essay. 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.

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

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

Victorianism

"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.

Victorian Research Web. Ed. Patrick Leary. VICTORIA discussion list for Victorian Studies.

Removed Articles

Devereux, Cecily. "Canada and the Epilogue to the Idylls: 'The Imperial Connection' in 1873." Victorian Poetry 36 (1998). Devereux examines Tennyson's attitude towards British Imperialism in Canada in the conclusion of Idylls of the King. (removed)

Gray, Erik. "'Out of me, out of me!': Andrea, Ulysses, and Victorian Revisions of Egotistical Lyric." Victorian Poetry 36 (1998). Gray looks at Victorian responses to the problem of the lyric "I," focusing on Browning's "Andrea Del Sarto" and Tennyson's "Ulysses." (removed)

Harland, Catherine R. "Interpretation and Rumor in Tennyson's 'Merlin and Vivien.'" Victorian Poetry 35 (1996). Harland contends that "Merlin and Vivien" embodies conflicting aspects of Tennyson's poetic identity. (removed)

Inboden, Robin. "The 'Valour of delicate women': The Domestication of Political Relations in Tennyson's Laureate Poetry." Victorian Poetry 36 (1998). On Tennyson's attitudes about gender in his later poetry. (removed)

Joseph, Gerhard. "Producing the 'Far-Off Interest of Tears': Tennyson, Freud, and the Economics of Mourning." Victorian Poetry 36 (1998). On In Memoriam. (removed)

Mansell, Darrel. "Displacing Hallam's Tomb in Tennyson's In Memoriam." Victorian Poetry 36 (1998). Mansell examines why Tennyson made errors of fact about Arthur Henry Hallam's death. (removed)

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

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