The indefinable darkness of Alfred Tennyson’s psyche
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, c.1840. Painted by Samuel Laurence
ALAMY, PICTORIAL PRESS
Science captivated the poet from early childhood. No one could have been better qualified to encapsulate in verse the great intellectual and spiritual debate of the age.
The Boundless Deep: Young Tennyson, Science and the Crisis of Belief
RICHARD HOLMES
(WILLIAM COLLINS, 448 PP, £25)
TABLET BOOKSHOP PRICE £22.50 • TEL 020 7799 4064
Was Tennyson ever young? Richard Holmes’ enthralling biography of the great poet begins with this question. Surviving photographs have fixed him in the public imagination as an ageing, forbidding patriarch with straggly hair and a classic Victorian beard. Meanwhile, his most frequently quoted poems – “The Charge of the Light Brigade”, “The Lady of Shalott”, “Ulysses” – place him firmly in the historical and mythological past.
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