The Major Works

by Alfred Tennyson, Adam Roberts (Editor)

Tennyson was the chief poetic voice of his age, and he remains one of the most highly regarded masters of the music and mood of verse. This authoritative edition brings together a unique combination of Tennyson's poetry and prose, spanning his entire career, from his striking juvenilia, through his career as Poet Laureate, to the powerful poetry he wrote in his ninth decade.

It contains such classics as "The Lady of Shalott," "Morte d'Arthur," Break, Break, Break," "Locksley Hall," "Ulysses," "The Charge of the Light Brigade," and "Tears, Idle Tears." It also includes in its entirety Tennyson's quasi-feminist epic The Princess, as well as the whole of In Memoriam, Maud, and Enoch Arden, and several sections of Idylls of the King.

The poems are augmented with a broad selection from Tennyson's letters, as well as relevant passages from his son Hallam Tennyson's Memoir of his father, where Tennyson talks widely about his own poetry and the writing of others. Robert Adams provides an insightful introduction and valuable notes, and the edition includes an up-to-date bibliography.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, 19th Century, British Literature, Anthologies

656 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1940

About the author

Works, including In Memoriam in 1850 and "The Charge of the Light Brigade" in 1854, of Alfred Tennyson, first baron, known as lord, appointed British poet laureate in 1850, reflect Victorian sentiments and aesthetics.

Elizabeth Tennyson, wife, bore Alfred Tennyson, the fourth of twelve children, to George Tennyson, clergyman; he inevitably wrote his books. In 1816, parents sent Tennyson was sent to grammar school of Louth.

Alfred Tennyson disliked school so intensely that from 1820, home educated him. At the age of 18 years in 1827, Alfred joined his two brothers at Trinity College, Cambridge and with Charles Tennyson, his brother, published Poems by Two Brothers , his book, in the same year.

Alfred Tennyson published Poems Chiefly Lyrical , his second book, in 1830. In 1833, Arthur Henry Hallam, best friend of Tennyson, engaged to wed his sister, died, and thus inspired some best Ulysses and the Passing of Arthur .

Following William Wordsworth, Alfred Tennyson in 1850 married Emily Sellwood Tenyson, his childhood friend. She bore Hallam Tennyson in 1852 and Lionel Tennyson in 1854, two years later.

Alfred Tennyson continued throughout his life and in the 1870s also to write a number of plays.

In 1884, the queen raised Alfred Tennyson, a great favorite of Albert, prince, thereafter to the peerage of Aldworth. She granted such a high rank for solely literary distinction to this only Englishman.

Alfred Tennyson died at the age of 83 years, and people buried his body in abbey of Westminster.

Reviews

[E. G. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Introduction
Chronology
Note on the Text

Poems

Juvenilia
--Timbuctoo
--'The Idealist'

Poems, Chiefly Lyrical (1830)
--Mariana
--Supposed Confessions of a Second-Rate Sensitive Mind
--Song ('I' the glooming light')
--Song ('A spirit haunts the year's last hours')
--The Kraken

Poems (1832)
--The Lady of Shalott
--Mariana in the South
--Œnone
--The Palace of Art
--The Hesperides
--The Lotos-Eaters
--A Dream of Fair Women

Poems (1842)
--The Two Voices
--St Simeon Stylites
--Ulysses
--Tithon (First version)
--The Epic/Morte d'Arthur
--'You ask me, why, tho' ill at ease'
--Audley Court
--'Break, break, break'
--Sir Galahad
--A Farewell
--'Oh! that 'twere possible'
--Locksley Hall
--The Vision of Sin
--The Eagle

The Princess (1847)
--The Princess

In Memoriam A.H.H. (1855)
--In Memoriam A.H.H.

Laureate Poems
--To the Queen
--Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington
--The Charge of the Light Brigade

Maud; A Monodrama (1855)
--Maud; A Monodrama

--Tithonus (Final version)
--Enoch Arden (1864)

Poems from the 1860s
Milton:
--I. Alcaics
--II. Hendecasyllabics
--Helen's Tower
--Northern Farmer, New Style
--'Flower in the crannied wall'
--The Higher Pantheism
--Lucretius

from The Idylls of the King (1869)
--Merlin and Vivien
--The Holy Grail

Poems of the 1870s and 1880's
--Rizpah
--The Revenge
--Battle of Brunanburh
--The Voyage of Maeldune
--De Profundis
--'Frater Ave atque Vale'
--To Virgil
--Vastness
--Locksley Hall Sixty Years After
--Far---Far---Away
--Merlin and the Gleam
--Crossing the Bar

Prose

Letters and Journal Entries
--1. To Mary Anne Fytche [Oct. 1821]
--2. To Elizabeth Russell 18 Apr. [1828]
--3. 'The Acts of the Apostles' [1829-30]
--4. To Elizabeth Russell 18 Mar. [1832]
--5. To William Henry Brookfield [mid-Mar. 1832]
--6. To James Spedding [7 Feb. 1833]
--7. Henry Elton to Alfred Tennyson 1 Oct. 1833
--8. To Richard Monckton Milnes [3 Dec. 1833]
--9. To Sofia Walls Rawnsley [Dec. 1833]
--10. To Henry Hallam 14 Feb. 1834
--11. To James Spedding [Mar. 1835]
--12. To Richard Monckton Milnes [9 Jan. 1837]
--13. To Leigh Hunt [13 July 1837]
--14. To Emily Sellwood [Mar./Apr. 1838]
--15. To Emily Sellwood [Oct./Nov. 1838]
--16. To Emily Sellwood [Jan. 1839]
--17. To Emily Sellwood [Nov. 1840]
--18. To Charles Stearns Wheeler [26 Aug. 1841]
--19. To Edmund Lushington [Feb. 1842]
--20. To Edward Fitzgerald [July 1842]
--21. Thomas Carlyle to Ralph Waldo Emerson [5 Aug. 1844]
--22. Tennyson's Journal of his Tour of Switzerland, Aug. 1846
--23. Charles Dickens to John Forster [24 Aug. 1846]
--24. To Coventry Patmore [28 Feb. 1849]
--25. To Emily Sellwood Tennyson, [13 July 1852]
--26. To John Forster 11 Aug. 1852
--27. To Robert James Mann [Sept. 1855]
--28. To G. G. Bradley 25 Aug. 1855
--29. To George Brimley 28 Nov. 1855
--30. Tennyson's Journal of his Tour of Portugal, Aug.-Sept. 1859
--31. To the Duke of Argyll [3 Oct. 1859]
--32. To Princess Alice [13 Jan. 1862]
--33. To Frederick Locker [31 Jan. 1863]
--34. To Algernon Charles Swinburne [Mar. 1865]
--35. To Richard Owen [Oct. 1865]
--36. Tennyson and Gladstone in Conversation, 8 Dec. 1865
--37. To Francis Palgrave [24 Dec. 1868]
--38. To William Cox Bennett [13 Nov. 1872]
--39. To Gladstone [30 Mar. 1873]
--40. To Gladstone [16 Apr. 1873]
--41. To Benjamin Paul Blood [7 May 1874]
--42. To Matthew Fraser [7 May 1880]
--43. To Gladstone [early Dec. 1883]
--44. To Francisque Michel [28 Jan. 1884]
--45. To Elizabeth Chapman [23 Nov. 1886]
--46. To Walt Whitman [15 Nov. 1887]
--47. To Charles Esmarch [18 Apr. 1888]

Excerpts from Hallam Tennyson's Memoir
--Tennyson in his own Words

Notes
Further Reading
Index of Titles
Index of First Lines

[Miriam Simut · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a great collection! I found some of the prose included at the end (some of Tennyson's letters to various people and biographical information provided by his son) to be a bit dry, and some poems either went over my head or I just didn't find them inspiring. BUT the poems I loved, I REALLY loved and look forward to many rereads!!

Standouts:
- Mariana
- Supposed Confessions of a Second-Rate Mind
- "Song" (autumnal)
- The Kraken
- Lady of Shalott
- Epic/Morte d'Arthur
- The Princess
- In Memoriam A.H.H.
- Enoch Arden

[Brian Willis · Rating 4 out of 5]

As Wordsworth's powers waned, Coleridge trapped in opium induced binges that clamped his poetic powers, and the younger Romantics all dying young in the 1820s, Tennyson emerged to lead the popular imagination into the Victorian age (she succeeded to the throne in 1837). Earlier poems such as "The Lady of Shalott", "Mariana", and "The Lotos-Eaters" exploited the renewed interest in the Gothic, Medieval, and classical themes and stories, while enclosed within highly regular, almost predictable rhythms and verse.

For my money, Tennyson's best work is "Ulysses" and "In Memoriam". Both make strides in poetic form and theme that transcend the period. Ulysses is a stirring peaen to past struggles and the motif of refusing to succumb to adversity. It's ripe for performance and is written in blank verse, similar to a Shakespearean style. However, Tennyson makes the extraordinary choice to compose it almost as an epilogue to The Odyssey, with Ulysses/Odysseus musing upon his life in Ithaca long after his 20 year struggle to return home from the Trojan War. Rather than the "happy ending" of contentment, Ulysses considers that it is mightier and nobler to continue moving, to struggle once again, to fight against old age even as it were. It's some of Tennyson's strongest material, and at 70 lines, is a must read for all poetic scholars and enthusiasts.

"In Memoriam" is a more complex and lengthier epic project. It's a dirge or requiem in verse, with an abba rhyme scheme that shows much more diversity of rhythm and rhyme than other poems of his. The poem struggles with the young loss of his best friend and attempts to reconcile that aching sense of loss in verse. How does one overcome grief when everything reminds you of that person? When you can still feel their presence, their touch, the void left by their loss in everything you do? How does one reconcile that irrational and tragic loss with providence and faith in a higher power? Ultimately, how does one truly say goodbye? How does acceptance gracefully descend on the mourner? It's a lengthier poem that can be read in a few hours but it is well worth the patience of the reader (in the mindset for a more somber poem of course) and is amongst the more profound poems in the English language.

Modern readers will sometimes find Tennyson more iconic of his time than transcendent of it, but I would argue that "Ulysses" and "In Memoriam" truly do transcend it. The other poems are rewarding, but don't expect innovation as much in those works, for a Poet Laureate who reflected a time that treasured order, structure, moralism, and relative normality to the changes in the physical world increasingly dominated by technological change. For a true poetry collector however, it's mandatory stuff with gems dotted throughout the works.

[Descending Angel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wide range of Tennyson's work. Not only does it collect his most famous works, but it has poems all throughout his life\career, from the 1830's to the 1880's. Tennyson is consistently great and a master poet. Highlights ~ "Supposed Confessions of a Second-rate Sensitive Mind" "The Lady of Shalott" "The Palace of Art" "St Simeon Stylites" "Ulysses" "Morte d'Arthur" "Locksley Hall" "Maud" "Enoch Arden" "The Voyage of Maeldune" and "Crossing the Bar".

[Loren · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you never read another poem in your life, read Tennyson's "In Memoriam." It was written over a period of 17 years as a tribute to Arthur Hallam, Tennyson's best friend and fellow poet, who would have been his brother-in-law if he had not died suddenly at the age of twenty-two.

"In Memoriam" is long (133 cantos), but don't let that deter you--it's Tennyson's magnum opus and it makes even his best-known achievements like "The Lady of Shallott" and "Charge of the Light Brigade" seem like child's play in comparison. I've never read a more piteously earnest attempt to reconcile faith with the tragedy of death, and Tennyson's thorough emotional wrestling with the simplest questions of existence, loss, beauty, and decay is stirring.

Favorite cantos:
Prologue
1-5
27
50
54-56
93
106
108
120
124
127
Epilogue

[Frank · Rating 5 out of 5]

I haven't really finished this, but I did read the introduction, and that is truly excellent. The selection is probably quite okay too, and since the same editor's annotations for the Browning's Major Works in the same series seem to be terrific, I'm assuming the annotations in this volume will be more than up to scratch as well.
So five stars for the edition. As for the poetry, all in good time. It's been around for a while, it won't be going anywhere anytime soon.

[Les Abernathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely a collection for a completist. It contains most of his best works, both large and small. It also collects a number of random letters and excerpts from a memoir if readers wants to learn more about the man behind the poetry. However, I find these inclusions to be more filler than interesting. Spoiler: Tennyson was a racist to the Irish.

[isaac · Rating 4 out of 5]

lowkey cooked

[Dale · Rating 4 out of 5]

Arguably the most English of well known poets in the 19th century. Interested to discover his contact with the American transcendental writers of the time.

[Yasiru]

Some of Tennyson's poems can be found with annotations on the following site-
http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poems/...

[Lydia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful

[Anne · Rating 1 out of 5]

Best words to summarize my feelings concerning poetry: torturous, tedious, migraine-inducing, mind-numbing, . . .

I think you get the idea.

[Jerry · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite poet of all time

[Joshua Friesen · Rating 3 out of 5]

What a great writer!