Emily Tennyson: the poet's wife

by Ann Thwaite

Emily Sellwood and Alfred Tennyson first knew each other as children in Lincolnshire, but were not married until nearly 30 years later, in the year Tennyson became Poet Laureate. This biography of Emily explores what kept them apart, and what eventually brought them together, and it discusses the life of a Victorian wife who was determined to be fully involved in work of the man she loved. Drawing on much unpublished material, the author depicts Emily's character and personality in detail, and presents the story of a remarkable family as well as a remarkable woman.

Paperback

First published November 1, 1996

About the author

Ann Thwaite is a British writer who is the author of five major biographies. AA Milne: His Life was the Whitbread Biography of the Year, 1990. Edmund Gosse: A Literary Landscape (Duff Cooper Prize, 1985) was described by John Carey as "magnificent - one of the finest literary biographies of our time". Glimpses of the Wonderful about the life of Edmund Gosse's father, Philip Henry Gosse, was picked out by D.J. Taylor in The Independent as one of the "Ten Best Biographies" ever. Her biography of Frances Hodgson Burnett was originally published as Waiting for the Party (1974) and reissued in 2020 with the title Beyond the Secret Garden, with a foreword by Jacqueline Wilson. Emily Tennyson, The Poet's Wife (1996) was reissued by Faber Finds for the Tennyson bicentenary in 2009.

Reviews

[Helen (Helena/Nell) · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read fairly quickly once I got going but this book took me weeks. It's long (607 pages) and its minutiae are detailed. The author is absolutely authoritative and loving in her attention to her subject. You would not find a more painstaking biography. While I was reading, I felt I was living in its age.

At times I found it dry, though at other times anything but. And even when I skimmed slightly because my attention was wavering, I felt the fault was really in me, rather than the book. All in all I found it enormously interesting and also surprising. The Tennyson family was not at all what I expected. The photograph on the front jacket, with Emily's dress so cleverly coloured in red, stays in the mind right through the reading. Tennyson himself so troubled and remote -- so odd. Emily so patient, clear-sighted, tough but frail, and the two curious sons with their silky long hair and the dressing-up box clothing. Little Lionel's buttons!

I liked the role of Edward Lear throughout, coming in and out as a family visitor, ever unmarried, ever attentive, sketching the dinner table and regarding Emily as a great soul. And that's how she comes through, in fact. What a difficult life she had, in so many ways. Who would be married to such a man?
And no great surprise that he loved her as he did.