
The Boundless Deep
Young Tennyson, Science, and the Crisis of Belief
Richard Holmes(Author)
Pantheon (Publisher)
Will be published approx. on 10. February 2026
Book
Hardback
448 pages
978-0-307-37967-2 (ISBN)
Description
A NEW YORK TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR SO FAR - SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE
In this dazzling new biography, Richard Holmes, critically acclaimed author of The Age of Wonder, discovers in Young Tennyson an astonishingly magnetic and mercurial personality, a secretly expressive and highly emotional man haunted by the great intellectual and scientific issues of his time.
"[Holmes is a] master scholar-biographer. . . . In prose so lucid that you barely notice when it has slipped into a stream of profound interiority, into the hidden life-current of his subject, Holmes gives us what feels like the whole man." --The Atlantic "There is no better literary biographer now writing than Richard Holmes." --The Wall Street Journal Tennyson rose to eminence as rapid and revolutionary discoveries were being made in the fields of biology, astronomy, geology, and marine science. It was a period of immense change akin to our own. For the first time, people were pursuing answers to questions that had felt previously unknowable--about biological evolution, the notion of a godless, unpitying universe, and of planetary extinction. These were as terrifying to Tennyson as climate catastrophe is to us today. It forced many to grapple with their understanding of the known world and their place within it and fostered a growing tension between religion and science. Tennyson's work during these years is suffused with strangely modern magic, and in Holmes' extraordinary biography, we witness Tennyson wrestling with mind-altering ideas about geology and deep time, the vastness, beauty, and terror of the new cosmology, and the challenges of social revolution. Tennyson's wild imagination and deep engagement with these concepts helped him emerge as the poetic voice of his generation--and he remains an inspiration for our own age.More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Publishing group
Random House USA Inc
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
TWO 8-PAGE 4/C PHOTO INSERTS
Dimensions
Height: 236 mm
Width: 163 mm
Thickness: 46 mm
Weight
703 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-307-37967-2 (9780307379672)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
RICHARD HOLMES is the author of The Age of Wonder, which was short-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction, won the Royal Society Prize for Science Books and the National Books Critics Circle Award, and was one of the New York Times Book Review's Best Books of the Year in 2009. Holmes' other books include This Long Pursuit, Footsteps, Sidetracks, Shelley: The Pursuit (winner of the Somerset Maugham Award), Coleridge: Early Visions (winner of the 1989 Whitbread Book of the Year Award), Coleridge: Darker Reflections (a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist), and Dr. Johnson & Mr. Savage (winner of the James Tait Black Prize). He was awarded the OBE in 1992. He lives in England.