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1 Palgrave Literary Dictionaries General Editors: Brian G. Caraher and Estelle Sheehan Founding Editor: Malcolm Andrew This series provides readers with concise and reliable guides to individual authors or groups of authors. Entries are arranged alphabetically and include topics and issues on literary works, fictional characters, place, historical, political and social contexts, intellectual influences, genre and critical traditions. Entries are cross-referenced as appropriate. Each Dictionary will include a practical introduction, bibliography of recommended further reading and a chronology of key events. Titles include: Malcolm Andrew THE PALGRAVE LITERARY DICTIONARY OF CHAUCER Martin Garrett THE PALGRAVE LITERARY DICTIONARY OF BYRON Valerie Purton and Norman Page THE PALGRAVE LITERARY DICTIONARY OF TENNYSON Palgrave Literary Dictionaries Series Standing Order ISBN (Hardback) (Paperback) (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England

2 Also by Valerie Purton POEMS BY TWO BROTHERS: The Poetry of George Clayton Tennyson and Charles Tennyson D Eyncourt (with Christopher Sturman) A COLERIDGE CHRONOLOGY AN IRIS MURDOCH CHRONOLOGY CHARLES DICKENS: Dombey and Son (editor) GUSTAV DORÉ: Doré s London (editor) ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON: Idylls of the King (editor) Also by Norman Page A DICKENS COMPANION A. E. HOUSMAN: A Critical Biography AUDEN AND ISHERWOOD: The Berlin Years E. M. FORSTER THE LANGUAGE OF JANE AUSTEN TENNYSON: An Illustrated Life TENNYSON: Interviews and Recollections

3 Palgrave Literary Dictionaries The Palgrave Literary Dictionary of Tennyson Valerie Purton & Norman Page

4 Valerie Purton & Norman Page 2010 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of their work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act First published 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number , of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN ISBN (ebook) DOI / This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress

5 For Campbell, Dinah and Tom Purton and in memory of Jean Page

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7 Contents Series Editors Foreword Preface Abbreviations Chronology ix xi xiii xv Entries A Z Bibliography 335 vii

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9 Series Editors Foreword The purpose of the Palgrave Literary Dictionaries is to provide the reader with immediate access to reliable information on some of the major authors of literature written in the English language. These books are intended for a readership including students, graduate students, teachers, scholars and advanced general readers. Each volume will be dedicated either to an individual author or to a group of authors. It will offer a concise reference guide, consisting mainly of entries presented under headwords arranged in alphabetical order. The entries will vary in length from about 10 to about 3,000 words, depending on the significance of the particular topic. The topics will include the literary works, individuals, fictional characters, genres, traditions, events, places, institutions, editors and scholars most relevant to a full and sophisticated understanding and appreciation of the author (or authors) in question. The more substantial entries will include suggestions for further reading, full particulars of which will be supplied in a selective bibliography. Access to information will be facilitated by extensive cross-referencing. We trust that volumes in this series will be judged by their effectiveness in providing quick, clear and convenient access to reliable and scholarly information. BRIAN G. CARAHER AND ESTELLE SHEEHAN Series Editors Queen s University Belfast ix

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11 Preface Tennyson is now generally recognized as the most important English poet of the Victorian age and a key figure in the cultural and intellectual life of the period. His exceptionally long life covers most of the nineteenth century, and his unusually long career most of Victoria s reign (beginning, indeed, before she came to the throne). His work touches on key issues in science, religion, philosophy, politics and other aspects of the age. Cast in a great variety of forms and genres, it also contains echoes of earlier texts ranging from the classics and the Bible to the English Romantics. His circle of friendships was remarkably wide and included many of the leading figures of his time. For all these reasons this volume will be valuable to students and readers of Tennyson as a user-friendly work of reference that provides succinct and accurate information on Tennyson s poetry, its period and contexts. The volume s primary emphasis is naturally on Tennyson s works. These entries are, however, augmented by a wide range of entries on Tennyson s life and friendships, on places of significance in his life and especially in relation to his poetry, on the connections between Tennyson s writings and those of other authors, on the historical, social, cultural and ideological context of his work, and on his contemporary reception and reputation and subsequent critical fortunes. A brief chronology relates the poet and his works to the times in which he lived. Within each entry, asterisks are used to indicate the existence of another potentially relevant entry on a related topic. In the interests of readability these have been kept to a minimum, and they have not been used unnecessarily to indicate the existence of entries on obvious topics (Arthur Hallam, In Memoriam etc.). Abbreviations too have been kept to a minimum. Each entry begins with a short definition, followed by an account which varies in length from a few dozen to three thousand words. The length of any particular entry is intended to be appropriate to the relative significance and complexity of the topic. Wherever possible, we have also given direct quotations from the people involved, so that readers may be able to hear more clearly these voices from the past. The longer entries and those on the more significant topics end with suggestions for further reading. These refer to the brief selective bibliography with which this book concludes. Information on periodicals mentioned in the text may be found under Periodicals. xi

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13 Abbreviations Works of Tennyson 1830 Poems, Chiefly Lyrical 1833 Poems (1833) 1842 Poems (1842) 1855 Maud and Other Poems Idylls The Idylls of the King 1864 Enoch Arden, etc The Holy Grail and Other Poems (dated 1870) 1880 Ballads and Other Poems 1885 Tiresias and Other Poems 1886 Locksley Hall Sixty Years After Etc Demeter and Other Poems 1892 The Death of Oenone, Akbar s Dream, and Other Poems Secondary sources Allingham William Allingham, William Allingham s Diary, introd. Geoffrey Grigson (Fontwell, Sussex: Centaur Press, 1967). Charles Tennyson Charles Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson (London: Macmillan, 1949). Chronology F. B. Pinion, A Tennyson Chronology (London: Macmillan, now Palgrave Macmillan, 1990). Jump John D. Jump (ed.), Tennyson: The Critical Heritage (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967). Letters Alfred, Lord Tennyson, The Letters of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, ed. Cecil Y. Lang and Edgar F. Shannon Jr., 3 vols, , , (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ). Martin Robert Bernard Martin, Tennyson: The Unquiet Heart (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980; rpt London: Faber, 1983). Memoir Hallam Tennyson, Tennyson: A Memoir by His Son, 2 vols (London: Macmillan, 1897). Page Norman Page (ed.), Tennyson: Interviews and Recollections (London: Macmillan, 1983; 2nd edn, Basingstoke: Macmillan, now Palgrave Macmillan, 1985). Ricks Alfred, Lord Tennyson, The Poems of Tennyson, ed. Christopher Ricks (London: Longmans, Green, 1969). xiii

14 xiv Abbreviations Tennysons Thwaite Charles Tennyson and Hope Dyson, The Tennysons: Background to Genius (London: Macmillan, 1974). Ann Thwaite, Emily Tennyson: The Poet s Wife (London: Faber and Faber, 1996).

15 Chronology 1809 (6 August) Birth of Alfred Tennyson at Somersby, Lincolnshire, fourth son of Rev. Dr George Clayton Tennyson, Rector of Somersby, and his wife Elizabeth (née Fytche) Alfred and his elder brothers attend Louth Grammar School Charles and Alfred continue their education at home under their father s supervision Verse-drama, The Devil and the Lady written by 14-year-old Alfred. In 1824 Dr Tennyson suffers a breakdown (April) Poems by Two Brothers published (by Charles and Alfred). (November) Charles and Alfred go up to Trinity College, Cambridge Alfred meets Arthur Hallam, joins the Apostles, select undergraduate debating society, and wins the Chancellor s Gold Medal for his poem Timbuctoo Poems, Chiefly Lyrical published. Hallam and Tennyson travel in the Spanish Pyrenees, visiting the Valley of Cauteretz. Charles Lyell publishes Vol. I of The Principles of Geology (March) George Clayton Tennyson dies. Tennyson leaves Cambridge without taking a degree Great Reform Bill. Social unrest. Hallam and Tennyson travel in Germany. (December) Poems (1833) published (September) Hallam dies in Vienna Tennyson in love with Rosa Baring (July) George Tennyson, Tennyson s grandfather, dies, leaving money to all his grandchildren (May) Tennyson s brother Charles marries Emily Sellwood s sister Louisa Coronation of Queen Victoria. The Tennysons leave Lincolnshire and settle in High Beech, Epping, in Essex Tennyson unofficially engaged to Emily Sellwood Engagement broken off. The Tennysons move to Tunbridge Wells in Kent. Tennyson suffers from recurrent nervous illness Poems 1842 published in 2 vols Tennyson loses most of his grandfather s inheritance when Matthew Allen s business venture collapses. Tennyson takes the water cure with Dr Gully in Malvern. xv

16 xvi Chronology 1844 Vestiges of Creation published anonymously Tennyson is granted a Civil List pension of 200 a year Tennyson and Edward Moxon travel in Switzerland The Princess is published Tennyson travels in Ireland and Cornwall. Year of Revolutions in Europe Tennyson resumes courtship of Emily Sellwood (May) In Memoriam appears. (June) Tennyson marries Emily Sellwood. (November) Tennyson succeeds Wordsworth as Poet Laureate (April) The Tennysons first child, a boy, is still-born. They travel in Italy. The Great Exhibition opens (August) Hallam Tennyson born. Louis Napoleon becomes Napoleon III and threatens Britain The Tennysons move to Farringford in Freshwater, Isle of Wight Crimean War between Russia and an alliance of Britain and France (March) Lionel Tennyson born Maud and Other Poems published Indian Mutiny breaks out Four Idylls of the King appear. Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species Tennyson visits Cornwall. The Tennysons travel to the Pyrenees, visiting the Valley of Cauteretz. (December) Prince Albert dies Tennyson s first audience with Queen Victoria Enoch Arden and Other Poems is published Second Reform Act extends the franchise Aldworth, the Tennysons second home, is built on Surrey/Sussex border Tennyson becomes a founder-member of the Metaphysical Society. The Holy Grail and Other Poems is published Gareth and Lynette and The Last Tournament appear Tennyson s first play, Queen Mary, is published Queen Mary is produced. Harold is published. Queen Victoria proclaimed Empress of India Charles Tennyson dies. The Falcon is produced Tennyson travels in Italy. Ballads and Other Poems appears Henry Irving produces and appears with Ellen Terry in The Cup Tennyson accepts a barony. (The offer of a baronetcy had been refused in 1865, 1873, 1874 and 1880.)

17 Chronology xvii 1884 Becket is published. Gladstone pushes through the Third Reform Act Tiresias and Other Poems published. General Gordon killed at Khartoum Queen Victoria s Golden Jubilee Death of Lionel Tennyson. Locksley Hall Sixty Years After appears Demeter and Other Poems published (6 October) Death of Tennyson. The Death of Oenone, Akbar s Dream and Other Poems published posthumously.