Tennyson

by Rebecca Stott

Lord Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate, published his first collection of poetry in 1830 and died in 1892, only nine years before Queen Victoria. His poetry, highly popular during his lifetime, has come to be regarded as representative of the Victorian age and as such its reputation has suffered at the hands of Modernist writers seeking to release themselves from the burden of what they saw as 'Victorianism'. In recent years, Tennyson's poetry has witnessed a revival of interest and new questions are being asked of his writing. Alternative reading strategies have emerged which have radically altered our understanding of Tennyson's poetry and his relationship to the Victorian age. This new collection of essays displays the richness and diversity of recent re-readings of Tennyson and explores the many different contexts in which his work is now discussed. Issues of empire and imperialism, evolutionary theory, class disruption, the politics of poetry and sexual politics including Victorian models of masculinity, sexuality and same-sex love are considered. The collection includes contributions by Terry Eagleton, Elaine Jordan, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Isobel Armstrong and Alan Sinfield.

223 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Rebecca Stott was born in Cambridge in 1964 and raised in Brighton in a large Plymouth Brethren community. She studied English and Art History at York University and then completed an MA and PhD whilst raising her son, Jacob, born in 1984.

She is the author of several academic books on Victorian literature and culture, two books of non-fiction, including a partial biography of Charles Darwin, and a cultural history of the oyster. She is now a Professor of English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. She has three children, Jacob, Hannah and Kezia and has lived in Cambridge since 1993. She has made several radio programmes for Radio Four.

Her first novel, Ghostwalk, is published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson in the UK, is the launch novel of the new fiction list of Spiegel and Grau in the US (a new division of Random House) and is being translated into 12 different languages including Russian and Chinese.
She is writing her next novel, The Coral Thief.

Reviews

[Josie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very helpful. Read as extra reading for a uni assignment. A collection of essays on Tennyson and his writing. Made me think more deeply about the historical and political contexts that help shape his work, and how it can be interpreted in numerous ways.