Tennyson: To Strive, To Seek, To Find
*Starred Review* In the poet who consoles Queen Victoria when Prince Albert dies, Batchelor recognizes the quintessential Victorian. Yet in a poet whose lyricism preserves the Romantic daring of Keats and whose personal life as a “dirty monk” makes him a social curiosity, Batchelor sees a man who transcends his age. Drawing on sources and scholarship not available when Martin published Tennyson: The Unquiet Heart (1980) and offering a broader perspective than Ormond gives in Alfred Tennyson: A Literary Life (1999), Batchelor develops a surprisingly complex portrait of an iconic writer. Readers see Tennyson become a national institution as Laureate, yet retain his regional loyalties—and Lincolnshire accent. They watch Tennyson immortalizing a dead friend in his masterpiece (In Memoriam), yet treat living friends with callous indifference. They see him serving the Crown with poems celebrating Britain’s imperial triumphs, while shocking critics with vehement attacks on Britain’s social corruption. They marvel at how a literary craftsman whose singular musical gifts sent him soaring in poetry could repeatedly stumble as a playwright. And they puzzle over the gender attitudes of a writer who echoes conventionally masculine points of view, yet also champions women’s rights. A trove of insights into the personality and literary vision of an exceptional poet. --Bryce Christensen