This short poem is an example of the official poetry that Tennyson wrote as Poet Laureate. Throughout his life Tennyson was fascinated by the technical challenge of classical translation, and poems like this illustrate the poetic virtuosity that accompanied the challenging thematic foci of his middle-period work. The topic Tennyson chose for this exercise illustrates also his continuing distrust of reviewers and critics, whom he often felt misunderstood him. This poem, in which a group of undergraduates take turns telling a story about a prince and his two friends who infiltrate an all-women college disguised as female students, was in part a response to the new Queen's College, London, an experiment in women's higher education founded in 1847. Edward Moxon, 1852.
Blue paper covers.
This poem was published on 18 November 1852, the day of Wellington's state funeral procession through the streets of London. The image here is from a painting of the event by Louis Haghe. Long misunderstood by critics, Tennyson's Maud is now widely regarded as his greatest poem. A fragmentary monodrama presented from the viewpoint of an alienated and often mad young man, it narrates his disillusion with Victorian commercialism, his love for the beautiful Maud, and his decision to enlist to fight in the Crimean War. Historians of psychiatry count the poem as among the earliest and most subtle descriptions of manic-depression, and literary critics now recognize it also as among the most innovative of Tennyson's works in poetic form.