Tennyson

For most of the hundred years since his death, Alfred Lord Tennyson has not enjoyed a lively reputation. Critics who are happiest investing poets with greatness only if they are poor, tragic, overlooked and preferably all three have never forgiven Tennyson for being as instantly recognisable as Queen Victoria, an enormously popular poet laureate and for having the temerity to make huge amounts of money from his poetry while he was still alive. This biography redresses the balance. Shedding new light on Tennyson's life from cradle to deathbed, Michael Thorn takes us from his distinctly gothic childhood peppered by scenes of drunkenness, lunacy and violence through the years of prosperity and popularity to his still creative yet increasingly cantankerous old age. He tackles the subjects that previous biographers have shied away from: the rumours of Tennyson's drug addiction, epilepsy, sexual coldness and even madness that persist to this day.
And placing his subject within the context of his era, he paints a detailed portrait of a complex man, innovative in his work, curiously dismissive of social graces, yet devoted to his family and obsessed by immortality, his health, and the lawns of his country home.