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Alfred Tennyson
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Alfred, Lord Tennyson : Funeral Ode
'That time Lord Tennyson was delightful - kind and friendly and full of stories, talking a great deal, and in the best of humours. He read the Funeral Ode to us afterwards, and one or two shorter poems (Blow, Bugles, Blow); and I was so glad and thankful that Cecco should see him so, and have such a bright recollection of him to carry through his life.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred, Lord Tennyson Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : The Cup
'In 1880 Tennyson attempted to interest Henry Irving in his play "The Cup" ... [he] "read in a monotone, rumbling on a low note" until, for the female parts, "he changed his voice suddenly and climbed up into a key he could not sustain". This was Ellen Terry's description: she was present with her 11-year-old daughter, who found the performance irresistibly comical, as apparently did Irving ...'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : The Passing of Arthur
'In 1876 Aubrey de Vere aranged for Alice Thompson ... and her sister Elizabeth a visit to [Tennyson at] Aldworth ... Alice was ready with her selection when the offer to read was issued. It was "The Passing of Arthur", and it was a mistake. Tennyson "complied ... [but] was not pleased with her choice, which he thought should have fallen on his later work".'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : Maud
' ... [over] a weekend at Aldworth ... [Margot Tennant] told Tennyson how very handsome he was, and, after his after-dinner nap, asked him to read "Maud" ... read it he did ...'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : Maud
'Mary Gladstone ... had experiences of Tennyson reading "Maud" in 1878, in 1879, and again in 1882.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : Maud
'Mary Gladstone ... had experiences of Tennyson reading "Maud" in 1878, in 1879, and again in 1882.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : Maud
'Mary Gladstone ... had experiences of Tennyson reading "Maud" in 1878, in 1879, and again in 1882.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : Harold
' ... in November 1876, when a guest of Gladstone at Hawarden, Tennyson read the whole of his new play, "Harold" (1877) ... The marathon session began at 11.30 and continued for two and a half hours, during which Gladstone nodded off and other minds turned to "such earthly things as luncheon".'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington
'When the Duke of Argyll ... visited Farringford, Tennyson read his "Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington" (1852) ...'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
William Wordsworth : poetry
Stephen Gill, "Copyright and the Publishing of Wordsworth, 1850-1900": "Many eminent Victorians -- George Eliot, Mill, Ruskin, and Tennyson ... read Wordsworth in the collections [of his poetry] published in his lifetime ..."
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Locksley Hall
Henry James to Elizabeth Boott 30 October 1878, on lunch that day with Tennyson at his home, : "He read out 'Locksley Hall' to me, in a kind of solemn, sonorous chant, and I thought the performance, and the occasion, sufficiently impressive."
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred, Lord Tennyson : Morte d'Arthur
'In the evening we all went over to the Camerons. Several Pre-Raphaelite artists were there to meet Tennyson; Hunt and Rossetti and one or two whose names I did not gather. Lear was there also and sang a great many of his compositions to Tennyson's words. They are mostly very pretty things but he has no voice, and, on the whole, it is rather painful to listen to him. When they were all gone Tennyson read us his own Morte d'Arthur, and that really was a pleasure. It is a poem I have always been fond of.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred, Lord Tennyson
John Milton : Samson Agonistes
'The first scene is the Lamentation of Sampson [sic] which possesses much pathos of sublimity ... I think this is beautiful... '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Edward Bulwer-Lytton : Falklands
'I have been seeking 'Falkland' here for a long time without success. Those beautiful extracts of it which you showed me at Tealby haunted me incessantly.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Henry Taylor : Philip van Artevelde
'By a quaint coincidence I received your letter directed (I suppose) by Phillip van Artevelde with Philip himself (not the man but the book) and I wish to tell you that I think him a noble fellow. I close with him in most that he says of modern poetry... etc.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Ralph Waldo Emerson : Essays
'I am much obliged to you for the volume of Emerson Essays. I had heard of him before and I know that Carlyle rates him highly. He has great thoughts and imaginations, but he sometimes misleads himself by his own facility of talking brilliantly. However, I have not perhaps studied him sufficiently.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
William Wordsworth : The white doe of Rylstone
'This is to let you know that I am at present in the classiz neighbourhood of Bolton Abbey whither I was led the other day by some half-remembrance of a note to one of Wordsworth's poems which told with me (to speak the truth) more than the poem itself: said Wordsworth having stated ... that everything which the eyes of man could desire in a lordship was to be found at and about the Abbey aforesaid.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Harriet Martineau : Miss Martineau on Mesmerism
'Ps. Have you read Miss Martineau on Mesmerism in the Athenaeum (two of them). I have got them and if you like I will send them to you. They are very wonderful [underlined]'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Serial / periodical
Ferdinand Freiligrath : Englische Gedichte als Neurer Zeit
'... therefore was my satisfaction great to receive (as I did this morning) a copy of your works with your own friendly autograph. I need not say how much I feel the honour you have done me in translating some of my poems... I have not yet had time and leisure sifficient to read your translations from myself carefully; but from what I have seen, ... they are not dry bones, but seem full of a living warmth in fact a Poet's [underlined] translation of poetry.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
F W Schneidewin : Delectus Presis Graeconim elegiacae, iambinis, melicae
'Lovely lines - but I knew them before ... the two last, two years ago in ... Schneidemn's Greek fragments - a book Frank Lushington had and which I ever since intended to get.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Philip James Bailey : Festus
'I have just got Festus - order it and read. You will most likely find it a great bore, but there are really very grand [both words underlined] things in festus... I have these last two days been reading 'Festus'... This sublimity is Michael-Angelic.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Mary Hewitt : Ballads and other poems
'I got your beautiful book of Ballads the other day at Moxon's. It contains (as far as I have seen it) much that is sweet and good and reminds me of you.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Aubrey de Vere : English Misdeeds and Irish Misrule
'His Irish book seems to me from the little I have read very clever.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Sophocles (?) : Oedipus Coloneus [sic]
'Read part of Oedipus Coloneus [title underlined].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Tobias Smollett : Ferdinand Count Fathom
'Finished reading Fathom [underlined].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Elizabeth Gaskell : Mary Barton
'I think my introduction to the authoress of that fine book Mary Barton must be postponed.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Coventry Patmore : The aesthetics of gothic architecture
'I now thank you very much for your able inauguration essay on Architecture and live in expectation of its successors.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Jean Ingelow : Rhyming chronicle of incidents and feelings
'I have only just returned to town, and found the Rhyming Chronicle [title underlined]. Your cousin must be worth knowing: there are some very charming things in her book... I really have only skimmed a few pages.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
John Moultrie : The Black Fence
'Mr Moultrie's poem seems spirited but I have had no time to study it well.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
[unknown] : [review of his own 'Idylls of the King']
'No! I have not read nothing! - not even a review of Idylls of the King - only heard Mrs Norton's account of Tennyson's reading it'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred, Lord Tennyson Print: Serial / periodical
Ovid :
'[Tennyson] was sent to the Grammar School [at Louth] [...] I still have the books which he used there, his Ovid, Delectus, Analecta Graeca Minora, and the old Eton Latin Grammar, originally put together by Erasmus, Lilly and Colet.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
: Analecta Graeca Minora
'[Tennyson] was sent to the Grammar School [at Louth] [...] I still have the books which he used there, his Ovid, Delectus, Analecta Graeca Minora, and the old Eton Latin Grammar, originally put together by Erasmus, Lilly and Colet.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
: Eton Latin Grammar
'[Tennyson] was sent to the Grammar School [at Louth] [...] I still have the books which he used there, his Ovid, Delectus, Analecta Graeca Minora, and the old Eton Latin Grammar, originally put together by Erasmus, Lilly and Colet.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
John Milton : Samson Agonistes
Alfred Tennyson, aged twelve, to his aunt Marianne Fytche: 'You used to tell me that you should be obliged to me if I would write to you and give you my remarks on works and authors. I shall now fulfil the promise which I made at that time. Going into the library this morning, I picked up "Samson Agonistes," on which (as I think it is a play you like) I shall send you my remarks [goes on to comment in detail on various transcribed passages from text, with points discussed including Classical allusions, and etymologies of words]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Horace :
'My father said that he [...] received a good but not a regular classical education. At any rate he became an accurate scholar, the author "thoroughly drummed into" him being Horace; whom he disliked in proportion. He would lament, "[...] It was not till many years after boyhood that I could like Horace. Byron expressed what I felt. 'Then farewell Horace whom I hated so.' Indeed I was so over-dosed with Horace that I hardly do him justice even now that I am old."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Thomas Bewick :
Arthur Tennyson on his brother Alfred's childhood reading: 'I remember his tremendous excitement when he got hold of Bewick for the first time: how he paced up and down the lawn for hours studying him, and how he kept rushing in to us in the schoolroom to show us some of the marvellous wood-cuts'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
: unknown
Arthur Tennyson on his brother Alfred's childhood reading: 'He was always a great reader; and if he went alone he would take his book with him on his walk. One day in the winter, the snow being deep, he did not hear the Louth mail coming up behind. Suddenly "Ho! ho!" from the coachman roused him. He looked up and found a horse's nose and eyes over his shoulder, as if reading his book.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Walter Scott : The Bride of Lammermoor
'After reading the Bride of Lammermoor [Tennyson] wrote the following [reproduces juvenile poem "The Bridal"]'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Virgil :
'Whewell, who was [Tennyson's] tutor, he called "the lion-like man" and had for him a great respect. It is reported that Whewell, recognising his genius, tolerated in him certain informalities which he would not have overlooked in other men. Thus, "Mr Tennyson, what's the compound interest of a penny put out at the Christian era up to the present time?" was Whewell's good-natured call to attention in the Lecture Room while my father was reading Virgil under the desk.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
William Shakespeare :
'Many friends of Somersby days have told me of the exceeding consideration and love which my father showed his mother [...] and how he might often be found in her room reading aloud, with his flexible voice, Shakespeare, Milton, Chaucer, Spenser, and Campbell's patriotic ballads.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
John Milton :
'Many friends of Somersby days have told me of the exceeding consideration and love which my father showed his mother [...] and how he might often be found in her room reading aloud, with his flexible voice, Shakespeare, Milton, Chaucer, Spenser, and Campbell's patriotic ballads.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Geoffrey Chaucer :
'Many friends of Somersby days have told me of the exceeding consideration and love which my father showed his mother [...] and how he might often be found in her room reading aloud, with his flexible voice, Shakespeare, Milton, Chaucer, Spenser, and Campbell's patriotic ballads.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Edmund Spenser :
'Many friends of Somersby days have told me of the exceeding consideration and love which my father showed his mother [...] and how he might often be found in her room reading aloud, with his flexible voice, Shakespeare, Milton, Chaucer, Spenser, and Campbell's patriotic ballads.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Campbell :
'Many friends of Somersby days have told me of the exceeding consideration and love which my father showed his mother [...] and how he might often be found in her room reading aloud, with his flexible voice, Shakespeare, Milton, Chaucer, Spenser, and Campbell's patriotic ballads.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Miguel de Cervantes : Don Quixote
'In the spring of 1831 my father was much distressed about the condition of his eyes and feared that he was going to lose his sight [...] He took to a milk diet for some months, which apparently "did good." At all events his eyesight was strong enough to allow him to study Don Quixote in the original.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Jane Austen : Emma
'[During summer 1831] Hallam was at Hastings [...] After his holiday Hallam returned to his reading of law, and enjoyed "the old fellow Blackstone," culling for Alfred [Tennyson] poetic words like "forestal" [...] The friends exchanged thoughts on the political state of the world [...] Miss Austen's novels were read and compared. My father preferred Emma and Persuasion, and Hallam wrote, "Emma is my first love, and I intend to be constant. The edge of this constancy will soon be tried, for I am promised the reading of Pride and Prejudice."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Jane Austen : Persuasion
'[During summer 1831] Hallam was at Hastings [...] After his holiday Hallam returned to his reading of law, and enjoyed "the old fellow Blackstone," culling for Alfred [Tennyson] poetic words like "forestal" [...] The friends exchanged thoughts on the political state of the world [...] Miss Austen's novels were read and compared. My father preferred Emma and Persuasion, and Hallam wrote, "Emma is my first love, and I intend to be constant. The edge of this constancy will soon be tried, for I am promised the reading of Pride and Prejudice."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Jean Racine :
'As for his private occupations [during 1834], my father was still reading his Racine, Moliere, and Victor Hugo among other foreign literature; and had also dipped into Marurice's work Eustace Conway, which appears [from letters] to have been in great disfavour, and into Arthur Coningsby by John Sterling, "a dreary book"'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Jean Racine :
'As for his private occupations [during 1834], my father was still reading his Racine, Moliere, and Victor Hugo among other foreign literature; and had also dipped into Marurice's work Eustace Conway, which appears [from letters] to have been in great disfavour, and into Arthur Coningsby by John Sterling, "a dreary book"'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Moliere :
'As for his private occupations [during 1834], my father was still reading his Racine, Moliere, and Victor Hugo among other foreign literature; and had also dipped into Marurice's work Eustace Conway, which appears [from letters] to have been in great disfavour, and into Arthur Coningsby by John Sterling, "a dreary book"'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Victor Hugo :
'As for his private occupations [during 1834], my father was still reading his Racine, Moliere, and Victor Hugo among other foreign literature; and had also dipped into Marurice's work Eustace Conway, which appears [from letters] to have been in great disfavour, and into Arthur Coningsby by John Sterling, "a dreary book"'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Maurice : Eustace Conway
'As for his private occupations [during 1834], my father was still reading his Racine, Moliere, and Victor Hugo among other foreign literature; and had also dipped into Marurice's work Eustace Conway, which appears [from letters] to have been in great disfavour, and into Arthur Coningsby by John Sterling, "a dreary book"'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
John Sterling : Arthur Coningsby
'As for his private occupations [during 1834], my father was still reading his Racine, Moliere, and Victor Hugo among other foreign literature; and had also dipped into Marurice's work Eustace Conway, which appears [from letters] to have been in great disfavour, and into Arthur Coningsby by John Sterling, "a dreary book"'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : 'Morte d'Arthur'
'The "faithful Fitz" [Edward Fitzgerald] writes that as early as 1835, when he met my father in the Lake Country, at the Speddings' (Mirehouse, by Bassenthwaite Lake) he saw what was to be part of this 1842 volume [of Tennyson's poetry], the "Morte d'Arthur," "The Day-Dream," "The Lord of Burleigh," "Dora," and "The Gardener's Daughter." They were read out of an MS. "in a little red book to him and Spedding of a night, when all the house was mute."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Manuscript: Unknown
Alfred Tennyson : 'The Day-Dream'
'The "faithful Fitz" [Edward Fitzgerald] writes that as early as 1835, when he met my father in the Lake Country, at the Speddings' (Mirehouse, by Bassenthwaite Lake) he saw what was to be part of this 1842 volume [of Tennyson's poetry], the "Morte d'Arthur," "The Day-Dream," "The Lord of Burleigh," "Dora," and "The Gardener's Daughter." They were read out of an MS. "in a little red book to him and Spedding of a night, when all the house was mute."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Manuscript: Unknown
Alfred Tennyson : 'The Lord of Burleigh'
'The "faithful Fitz" [Edward Fitzgerald] writes that as early as 1835, when he met my father in the Lake Country, at the Speddings' (Mirehouse, by Bassenthwaite Lake) he saw what was to be part of this 1842 volume [of Tennyson's poetry], the "Morte d'Arthur," "The Day-Dream," "The Lord of Burleigh," "Dora," and "The Gardener's Daughter." They were read out of an MS. "in a little red book to him and Spedding of a night, when all the house was mute."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Manuscript: Unknown
Alfred Tennyson : 'Dora'
'The "faithful Fitz" [Edward Fitzgerald] writes that as early as 1835, when he met my father in the Lake Country, at the Speddings' (Mirehouse, by Bassenthwaite Lake) he saw what was to be part of this 1842 volume [of Tennyson's poetry], the "Morte d'Arthur," "The Day-Dream," "The Lord of Burleigh," "Dora," and "The Gardener's Daughter." They were read out of an MS. "in a little red book to him and Spedding of a night, when all the house was mute."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Manuscript: Unknown
Alfred Tennyson : 'The Gardener's Daughter'
'The "faithful Fitz" [Edward Fitzgerald] writes that as early as 1835, when he met my father in the Lake Country, at the Speddings' (Mirehouse, by Bassenthwaite Lake) he saw what was to be part of this 1842 volume [of Tennyson's poetry], the "Morte d'Arthur," "The Day-Dream," "The Lord of Burleigh," "Dora," and "The Gardener's Daughter." They were read out of an MS. "in a little red book to him and Spedding of a night, when all the house was mute."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Manuscript: Unknown
William Wordsworth : 'Michael'
'The "faithful Fitz" [Edward Fitzgerald] writes that as early as 1835, when he met my father in the Lake Country, at the Speddings' (Mirehouse, by Bassenthwaite Lake) he saw what was to be part of this 1842 volume [of Tennyson's poetry], the "Morte d'Arthur," "The Day-Dream," "The Lord of Burleigh," "Dora," and "The Gardener's Daughter." They were read out of an MS. "in a little red book to him and Spedding of a night, when all the house was mute [...] My father read them a great deal of Wordsworth, "the dear old fellow," as he called him [...] Fitzgerald notes again: '"I could remember A. T. saying he remembered the time when he could see nothing in 'Michael' which he now read us in admiration [...]" 'My father also read Keats and Milton'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
John Keats :
'The "faithful Fitz" [Edward Fitzgerald] writes that as early as 1835, when he met my father in the Lake Country, at the Speddings' (Mirehouse, by Bassenthwaite Lake) he saw what was to be part of this 1842 volume [of Tennyson's poetry], the "Morte d'Arthur," "The Day-Dream," "The Lord of Burleigh," "Dora," and "The Gardener's Daughter." They were read out of an MS. "in a little red book to him and Spedding of a night, when all the house was mute [...] My father read them a great deal of Wordsworth, "the dear old fellow," as he called him [...] Fitzgerald notes again: '"I could remember A. T. saying he remembered the time when he could see nothing in 'Michael' which he now read us in admiration [...]" 'My father also read Keats and Milton'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
John Milton :
'The "faithful Fitz" [Edward Fitzgerald] writes that as early as 1835, when he met my father in the Lake Country, at the Speddings' (Mirehouse, by Bassenthwaite Lake) he saw what was to be part of this 1842 volume [of Tennyson's poetry], the "Morte d'Arthur," "The Day-Dream," "The Lord of Burleigh," "Dora," and "The Gardener's Daughter." They were read out of an MS. "in a little red book to him and Spedding of a night, when all the house was mute [...] My father read them a great deal of Wordsworth, "the dear old fellow," as he called him [...] Fitzgerald notes again: '"I could remember A. T. saying he remembered the time when he could see nothing in 'Michael' which he now read us in admiration [...]" 'My father also read Keats and Milton'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Pringle : Travels
'During some months of 1837 my father was deeply immersed in Pringle's Travels, and Lyell's Geology'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Lyell : 'Geology'
'During some months of 1837 my father was deeply immersed in Pringle's Travels, and Lyell's Geology'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
: 'anecdotes of Methodist ministers'
Alfred Tennyson to Emily Sellwood (1839): 'I am housed at Mr Wildman's, an old friend of mine in these parts: he and his wife are two perfectly honest Methodists [...] I was half-yesterday reading anecdotes of Methodist ministers, and liking to read them too'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
: 'book of English verse by a Welshman'
Alfred Tennyson to Emily Sellwood (1839): 'I took up this morning an unhappy book of English verse by a Welshman, and read therein that all which lies at present swampt fathom-deep under the bay of Carnarvon was long ago in the twilight of history a lovely lowland, rich in woods, thick with cities. One wild night a drunken man, who was a sort of clerk of the drains and sewers in his time, opened the dam-gates and let in the sea, and Heaven knows how many stately palaces have ever since been filled with polyps and sea-tangle.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Virgil :
'Savile Morton wrote to his mother that he had "come across Alfred Tennyson." "We looked out some Latin translations of his poems by Cambridge men, and read some poems of Leigh Hunt's, and some of Theocritus and Virgil [...] I had no idea Virgil could ever sound so fine as it did by his reading....Yesterday I went to see him again. After some chat we sat down in two separate rooms to read Ellen Middleton, by Lady Georgiana Fullerton -- very highly spoken of."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
: 'medical books'
Alfred Tennyson to Hallam Tennyson, on his childhood hypochondria: 'I used, from having early read in my father's library a great number of medical books, to fancy at times that I had all the diseases in the world, like a medical student.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Sophocles : Oedipus Coloneus
From Alfred Tennyson's journal of his tour in Cornwall, 1848: '14th [June]. Read part of Oedipus Coloneus [sic].'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Tobias Smollett : The Adventures of Ferdinand, Count Fathom
From Alfred Tennyson's journal of his tour in Cornwall, 1848: '19th [June]. Finished reading Fathom.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Miss Rundle : poem on Italy
From 'private diary' of 'Mrs Rundle Charles, who was then Miss Rundle,' on visit from Tennyson at Upland, her uncle's house, four miles outside Plymouth: 'He spoke of the Italians as a great people (it was in 1848, the year of revolutions) [...] He had read a poem of mine on Italy: said he felt "great interest in the Italian movement as in all great movements for freedom"'.
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Jean Ingelow : A Rhyming Chronicle of Incidents and Feelings
Alfred Tennyson to 'Miss Holloway (of Spilsby)', 'about her cousin Miss Jean Ingelow's poems, A Rhyming Chronicle of Incidents and Feelings': 'I have only just returned to town, and found the Rhyming Chronicle. Your cousin must be worth knowing; there are some very charming things in her book, at least it seems so to me, tho' I do not pique myself on being much of a critic at first sight, and I really have only skimmed a few pages. Yet I think I may venture to pronounce that she need not be ashamed of publishing them. Certain things I saw which I count abominations, tho' I myself in younger days have been guilty of the same, and so was Keats. I would sooner lose a pretty thought than enshrine it in such rhymes as "Eudora" "before her," "vista" "sister." She will get to hate them herself before she gets older, and it would be a pity that she should let her book go forth with these cockneyisms. If the book were not so good I should not care for these specks, but the critics will pounce upon them, and excite a prejudice.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Crabbe : 'A Sorrowful Tale'
Aubrey de Vere on Tennyson's second visit to Ireland, as his guest, during 1848: 'In the evenings he had vocal music from Lady de Vere and her sister, and Sonatas of Mozart and Beethoven played by my eldest brother [...] Later, he read poetry to us with a voice that doubled its power, commonly choosing pathetic pieces; and on one occasion after finishing "A Sorrowful Tale" by Crabbe, glanced round reproachfully and said, "I do not see that any of you are weeping!"'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Daniel O'Connell : History of Ireland
The octogenarian Bewicke Blackburne to Alfred Tennyson, 6 August 1891: '"Long life to your honour," as Irish peasants used to say, and so say I, the man who was working the State quarry, on the Island of Valencia, when you spent a few days there in 1848, Chartist times in London and Fenian times in Ireland [...] Your sonorous reading to us after dinner sundry truculent passages in Daniel O'Connell's History of Ireland, which happened to be lying on my table, has lingered in my ears ever since. Seeing among my few books all that your friend Carlyle had up to that time published, you told me you thought he had nothing more to say. I was often reminded of this whilst reading his subsequent Cromwell and Frederick and Latter Days, and how near that was to the truth.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : stanzas from In Memoriam
Aubrey de Vere on time spent with Alfred Tennyson in London during 1850: 'Few of the hours I spent with Alfred surive with such a pathetic sweetness and nearness in my recollection as those which are associated with that time and with "In Memoriam" [...] 'I went to him very late each night, and he read many of the poems to me or discussed them with me till the early hours of the morning. The tears often ran down his face as he read, without the slightest apparent consciousness of them on his part. The pathos and grandeur of those poems were to me greatly increased by the voice which rather intoned than recited them [...] Sometimes towards the close of a stanza his voice dropped; but I avoided the chance of thus losing any part of the meaning by sitting beside him, and glancing at the pieces he read. They were written in a long and narrow manuscript book, which assisted him to arrange the poems in due order by bringing many of them at once before his eye.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Manuscript: Unknown
Ovid : works
Alfred Tennyson to 'Mr Malan', 14 November 1883: 'I can assure you I am innocent as far as I am aware of knowing one line of Statius; and of Ovid's "Epicedion" I never heard. I have searched for it in vain in a little three volume edition of Ovid which I have here, but that does not contain this poem'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
: Bible
'That my father was a student of the Bible, those who have read "In Memoriam" know. He also eagerly read all notable works within his reach relating to the Bible, and traced with deep interest such fundamental truths as underlie the great religions of the world.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
: works on Bible
'That my father was a student of the Bible, those who have read "In Memoriam" know. He also eagerly read all notable works within his reach relating to the Bible, and traced with deep interest such fundamental truths as underlie the great religions of the world.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
: philosophical texts
'That my father was a student of the Bible, those who have read "In Memoriam" know. He also eagerly read all notable works within his reach relating to the Bible [...] 'Soon after his marriage he took to reading different systems of philosophy, yet none particularly influenced him.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
: novels
Alfred Tennyson to his wife Emily, 13 July 1852: 'I am reading lots of novels. The worst is they do not last longer than the day. I am such a fierce reader I think I have had pretty well my quantum suff.:'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Dr Wordsworth : Apocalypse
'Early in 1852 my father and mother went on a visit to one of his old College friends, Mr Rashdall the clergyman of Malvern [...] While they were there my father read Dr Wordsworth's Apocalypse to my mother.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Layard : Nineveh
'Happy days were spent in the little Twickenham garden, my father reading aloud passages of any book which struck him. Layard's Nineveh and Herschel's Astronomy were read at this time.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Herschel : 'Astronomy'
'Happy days were spent in the little Twickenham garden, my father reading aloud passages of any book which struck him. Layard's Nineveh and Herschel's Astronomy were read at this time.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Charles Kingsley : Hypatia
Alfred Tennyson to Charles Kingsley (1853): 'Part of the conclusion [of Hypatia] seems to me particularly valuable. I mean the talk of the Christianized Jew to the classic boy. Hypatia's mistreatment by the Alexandrians I found almost too horrible. It is very powerful and tragic; but I objected to the word "naked." Pelagia's nakedness has nothing which revolts one... but I really was hurt at having Hypatia stript, tho' I see that it adds to the tragic, and the picture as well as the moral is a fine one.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Baxter : Flowering Plants
'Some days we [Tennyson children] went flower-hunting, and on our return home, if the flower was unknown, he [Alfred Tennyson] would say, "Bring me my Baxter's Flowering Plants," to look it out for us.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Grimm : Fairy Stories
'Sometimes he [Tennyson] read Grimm's Fairy Stories or repeated ballads to us.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
: Persian grammar
Alfred Tennyson to John Forster, 29 March 1854: 'I understand from Archibald Peel that you are aggrieved at my not writing to you [...] A reason for my not writing much is the bad condition of my right eye which quite suddenly came on as I was reading or trying to read small Persian text. You know perhaps how very minute in some of those Eastern tongues are the differences of letters: a little dot more or less: in a moment, after a three hours' hanging over this scratchy text, my right eye became filled with great masses of floating blackness, and the other eye similarly affected tho' not so badly. I am in a great fear about them, and think of coming up to town about them'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Virgil : Aeneid VI
'Throughout the autumn and winter evenings [of 1854] he [Alfred Tennyson] translated aloud to my mother the sixth Aeneid of Virgil and Homer's description of Hades, and they read Dante's Inferno together. Whewell's Plurality of Worlds he also carefully studied. "It is to me anything," he writes, "but a satisfactory book. It is inconceivable that the whole Universe was created merely for us who live in this third-rate planet of a third-rate sun."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Homer : 'description of Hades'
'Throughout the autumn and winter evenings [of 1854] he [Alfred Tennyson] translated aloud to my mother the sixth Aeneid of Virgil and Homer's description of Hades, and they read Dante's Inferno together. Whewell's Plurality of Worlds he also carefully studied. "It is to me anything," he writes, "but a satisfactory book. It is inconceivable that the whole Universe was created merely for us who live in this third-rate planet of a third-rate sun."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Whewell : Plurality of Worlds
'Throughout the autumn and winter evenings [of 1854] he [Alfred Tennyson] translated aloud to my mother the sixth Aeneid of Virgil and Homer's description of Hades, and they read Dante's Inferno together. Whewell's Plurality of Worlds he also carefully studied. "It is to me anything," he writes, "but a satisfactory book. It is inconceivable that the whole Universe was created merely for us who live in this third-rate planet of a third-rate sun."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
: account of Charge of the Light Brigade
'On Dec 2nd [1854], he [Tennyson] wrote "The Charge of the Light Brigade" in a few minutes, after reading the description in the Times in which occured the phrase "some one had blundered," and this was the origin of the meter of his poem.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Newspaper
Theocritus : Hylas
'In February [1855] my father "translated aloud three Idylls of Theocritus, Hylas, The Island of Cos, and The Syracusan Women."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Theocritus : The Island of Cos
'In February [1855] my father "translated aloud three Idylls of Theocritus, Hylas, The Island of Cos, and The Syracusan Women."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Theocritus : The Syracusan Women
'In February [1855] my father "translated aloud three Idylls of Theocritus, Hylas, The Island of Cos, and The Syracusan Women."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Maud (sections)
'On Jan. 10th 1855 my father had "finished, and read out, several lyrics of Maud.'"
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Manuscript: Unknown
Walter Scott : The Lady of the Lake
'[from] April 25th [...] [Tennyson] "copied out 'Maud' for the press, and read 'The Lady of the Lake,' having just finished Goethe's 'Helena.'"'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe : Helena
'[from] April 25th [...] [Tennyson] "copied out 'Maud' for the press, and read 'The Lady of the Lake,' having just finished Goethe's 'Helena.'"'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Maud
From Tennyson's journal of 1855: 'October 1st. [...] I read "Maud" to five or six people at the Brownings (on Sept. 28th).'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Maud
'At the end of the year [1855] an unknown Nottingham artizan [sic] came to call. My father asked him to dinner and at his request read "Maud." It appears that the poor man had sent his poems beforehand. They had been acknowledged, but had not been returned, and had been forgotten. He was informed that the poems, thus sent, were always looked at, although my father and mother had not time to pass judgement on them. A most pathetic incident of this kind, my father told me, happened to him at Twickenham, when a Waterloo soldier brought twelve large cantos on the battle of Waterloo. The veteran had actually taught himself in his old age to read and write that he might thus commemorate Wellington's great victory. The epic lay for some time under the sofa in my father's study, and was a source of much anxiety to him. How could he go through such a vast poem? One day he mustered up courage and took a portion out. It opened on the head of a canto: "The Angels encamped above the field of Waterloo." On that day, at least, he "read no more." He gave the author, when he called for his manuscript, this criticism: "Though great images loom here and there, your poem could not be published as a whole." The old man answered nothing, wrapt up each of the twelve cantos carefully, placed them in a strong oak case and carried them off. He was asked to come again but he never came.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
anon : 12-canto poem on battle of Waterloo
'At the end of the year [1855] an unknown Nottingham artizan [sic] came to call. My father asked him to dinner and at his request read "Maud." It appears that the poor man had sent his poems beforehand. They had been acknowledged, but had not been returned, and had been forgotten. He was informed that the poems, thus sent, were always looked at, although my father and mother had not time to pass judgement on them. A most pathetic incident of this kind, my father told me, happened to him at Twickenham, when a Waterloo soldier brought twelve large cantos on the battle of Waterloo. The veteran had actually taught himself in his old age to read and write that he might thus commemorate Wellington's great victory. The epic lay for some time under the sofa in my father's study, and was a source of much anxiety to him. How could he go through such a vast poem? One day he mustered up courage and took a portion out. It opened on the head of a canto: "The Angels encamped above the field of Waterloo." On that day, at least, he "read no more." He gave the author, when he called for his manuscript, this criticism: "Though great images loom here and there, your poem could not be published as a whole." The old man answered nothing, wrapt up each of the twelve cantos carefully, placed them in a strong oak case and carried them off. He was asked to come again but he never came.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Manuscript: Unknown
Alfred Tennyson : Maud
'I shall never forget his [Tennyson's] last reading of "Maud," on August 24th, 1892. He was sitting in his high-backed chair, fronting a southern window which looks over the groves and yellow cornfields of Sussex towards the long line of South Downs that stretches from Arundel to Hastings (his high-domed Rembrandt-like head outlined against the sunset-clouds seen through the western window). His voice, low and calm in everyday life, capable of manifold and delicate intonation, but with "organ-tones" of great power and range, thoroughly brought out the drama of the poem.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : The Curse of Boadicea
'When Fanny Kemble heard that my father read his "Maud" finely, she wrote: "I do not think any reading of Tennyson's can ever be as striking and impressive as that "Curse of Boadicea" [sic] that he intoned to us, while the oak trees were writhing in the storm that lashed the windows and swept over Blackdown the day we were there." (Unpublished MS.)'
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Homer : The Odyssey
'During the winter evenings of 1855 my father would translate the Odyssey aloud into Biblical prose for my mother, who writes, "Thus I get as much as it is possible to have of the true spirit of the original."'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Thomas Hughes : Tom Brown's Schooldays
'This summer [1857] the tour was to Manchester, Coniston, Inverary Castle, and Carstairs (the home of my father's college friend Monteith). On this journey he read aloud Tom Brown's School-Days to my mother, enjoying it thoroughly.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : 'The Grandmother'
'In July [1858] we stayed at Little Holland House, Kensington, with the Prinseps; and here my father began "The Fair Maid of Astolat," and read aloud "The Grandmother."'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
F. D. Maurice : Friendship of Books
'I remember [...] [Tennyson's] reading with admiration this passage from Maurice's Friendship of Books. "If I do not give you extracts from any of Milton's specially controversial writings, it is not that I wish to pass them over because the conclusions in them are often directly opposed to mine, for I think that I have learnt most from those that are so."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Thomas Malory : Morte d'Arthur
'Oct 4th. [1858] "To-day," my mother says [in diary], "A. took a volume of the Morte d'Arthur and read a noble passage about the battle with the Romans. He went to meet Mr and Mrs Roebuck at dinner at Swainston: and the comet was grand, with Arcturus shining brightly over the nucleus. At dinner he said he must leave the table to look at it, and they all followed [...]" When he returned next night he "observed the comet from his platform, and, when he came down for tea, read some Paradise Lost."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
John Milton : Paradise Lost
'Oct 4th. [1858] "To-day," my mother says [in diary], "A. took a volume of the Morte d'Arthur and read a noble passage about the battle with the Romans. He went to meet Mr and Mrs Roebuck at dinner at Swainston: and the comet was grand, with Arcturus shining brightly over the nucleus. At dinner he said he must leave the table to look at it, and they all followed [...]" When he returned next night he "observed the comet from his platform, and, when he came down for tea, read some Paradise Lost."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Alexander Pope : The Rape of the Lock
From Emily Tennyson's diary: 'Oct. 17th. [1858] He [Alfred Tennyson] read aloud "The Rape of the Lock," and noted the marvellous skill of many of the couplets.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : In Memoriam A. H. H.
'The sudden death of Henry Hallam was a great grief to my father, for the historian had been a good friend through thirty years. On hearing of Mr Hallam's last days he read some of "In Memoriam" aloud and dwelt on those passages which most moved him.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Charles Darwin : On the Origin of Species
'In November [1859] [Tennyson] was reading with intense interest an early copy of Darwin's Origin of Species, sent him by his own desire'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Boadicea
'The Duke and Duchess [of Argyll] spent some days at Farringford [...] My father [...] read aloud his "Boadicea," which he had now quite finished.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Manuscript: Unknown
Homer : The Iliad
'In the summer of 1861 we travelled in Auvergne and the Pyrenees [...] At Mont Dore, while my father was reading some of the Iliad out aloud to us, little boys came and stood outside the window in open-mouthed astonishment.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
: Zohrab the Hostage
Alfred Tennyson to the Duke of Argyll, from the Temple, London, on return from French holiday of summer 1861: 'I had intended to write yesterday [...] and I scarce know why I did not: perhaps because in these chambers I had lighted on an old and not unclever novel Zohrab the Hostage; partly perhaps because I had fallen into a muse about human vanities and "the glories of our blood and state" (do you know those grand old lines of Shirley's?) [...] however, what with the novel and the musing fit, I let the post slip'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Duchess of Kent : inscription
Alfred Tennyson to Lady Augusta Bruce, 12 May 1863, after being sent an 'Album' belonging to Queen Victoria, with the request that he write something in it before returning it: 'I had not time yesterday to overlook the volume which Her Majesty sent me. I did but see the inscription in the beginning by the Duchess of Kent and Goethe's "Edel sei der Mensch" in the Prince's handwriting -- a poem which has always appeared to me one of the grandest things which Goethe or any other man has written.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Manuscript: Unknown, In Album belonging to Queen Victoria
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe : 'Edel sei der Mensch'
Alfred Tennyson to Lady Augusta Bruce, 12 May 1863, after being sent an 'Album' belonging to Queen Victoria, with the request that he write something in it before returning it: 'I had not time yesterday to overlook the volume which Her Majesty sent me. I did but see the inscription in the beginning by the Duchess of Kent and Goethe's "Edel sei der Mensch" in the Prince's handwriting -- a poem which has always appeared to me one of the grandest things which Goethe or any other man has written.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Manuscript: Unknown, Written by Prince Albert into Album belonging to Queen Victoria.
Guizot : Preface to Speeches of Prince Albert
Alfred Tennyson to Lady Augusta Bruce, 12 May 1863, after receiving from Queen Victoria, on 11 May, books including 'Guizot's edition of Prince Albert's Speeches': 'I have read Guizot's Preface, which is just what it ought to be -- compact, careful, reverential'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Stevenson : Praying and Working
From Thomas Wilson's 'Reminiscences' of Tennyson (1863-64): 'He came into my room one day looking for any new book to feed upon: he took down one by Stevenson called Praying and Working, an account of German Ragged Schools; he told me afterwards he had read it with great pleasure'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : poetry
From William Allingham's 'Reminiscences' of Tennyson (1863-64): 'Oct. 3rd, 1863. Saturday. We drove to Farringford [...] Drawing-room tea [...] I wandered to the book-table where Tennyson joined me [...] In a book of Latin versions from his own poetry he found some slips in Lord Lyttelton's Cytherea Venus, etc.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
William Shakespeare : Othello
From William Allingham's 'Reminiscences' of Tennyson (1863-64): 'Oct. 4th [1863] I walked over alone to Farringford [...] Tennyson at luncheon [...]we went down and walked about the grounds [...] We went down the garden [...] and so to the farmyard. "Have you a particular feeling about a farmyard?" he asked, "a special delight in it? I have. The first time I read Shakespeare was on a hay-stack, Othello. I said, 'This man's over-rated.' Boys can't understand Shakespeare."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
: Book of Job
From Emily Tennyson's diary (1865): 'June 8th. We went home by Winchester and slept there, and lunched with the Warburtons [...] He [Tennyson] and Mr Warburton compared notes, for A. had been reading Job in Hebrew, a book in which he had always rejoiced.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Lucretius :
From Emily Tennyson's diary (1865): 'Oct. 6th. A. read me some Lucretius, and the 1st Epistle of St Peter. (At work on his new poem of "Lucretius.")'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
St Peter : First Epistle
From Emily Tennyson's diary (1865): 'Oct. 6th. A. read me some Lucretius, and the 1st Epistle of St Peter. (At work on his new poem of "Lucretius.")'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : The Northern Farmer
'May 2nd. [1866] Marlborough [...] In the evening the Bradleys had a large dinner-party. [George] Bradley [headmaster] knowing my father's love of science had asked masters interested in geology, botany and archaeology to meet him [...] At the request of Mrs Bradley he read "The Northern Farmer," and then criticised amusingly some of the boys' Prize Poems which Bradley had asked him to look through.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Pupils at Marlborough College : Prize Poems
'May 2nd. [1866] Marlborough [...] In the evening the Bradleys had a large dinner-party. [George] Bradley [headmaster] knowing my father's love of science had asked masters interested in geology, botany and archaeology to meet him [...] At the request of Mrs Bradley he read "The Northern Farmer," and then criticised amusingly some of the boys' Prize Poems which Bradley had asked him to look through.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : Guinevere
'May 3rd. [1866] After dinner the Upper Sixth came in, and at their petition [Tennyson] read "Guinevere," refusing however enthronement in a large arm-chair, and asserting it was "too conspicuous."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : The Northern Farmer
'After dinner [during stay at Marlborough College] my father was again asked to read by Mrs Bradley: "Will it be too cruel to ask you to read "The Grandmother?" [...] A Belgian governess, Mdlle. Stapps, was on the chair just behind him. He said, "I can't read 'The Grandmother' properly except after breakfast, when I am weak and tremulous; fortified by dinner and a glass of port I am too vigorous." "Well; read 'The Northern Farmer' then." So he did: and asked Mdlle. how much she understood. "Pas un mot, Monsieur." 'Then he read "The Grandmother," and after that four pieces out of Hood's Whims and Oddities, "Faithless Nelly Gray," "Faithless Sally Brown," "Tim Turpin" and "Ben Battle." He explained the play on words in them to Mdlle. who was "excessivement enchantee." He laughed till the tears came at some of the things he read. This went on till 11.50'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : The Grandmother
'After dinner [during stay at Marlborough College] my father was again asked to read by Mrs Bradley: "Will it be too cruel to ask you to read "The Grandmother?" [...] A Belgian governess, Mdlle. Stapps, was on the chair just behind him. He said, "I can't read 'The Grandmother' properly except after breakfast, when I am weak and tremulous; fortified by dinner and a glass of port I am too vigorous." "Well; read 'The Northern Farmer' then." So he did: and asked Mdlle. how much she understood. "Pas un mot, Monsieur." 'Then he read "The Grandmother," and after that four pieces out of Hood's Whims and Oddities, "Faithless Nelly Gray," "Faithless Sally Brown," "Tim Turpin" and "Ben Battle." He explained the play on words in them to Mdlle. who was "excessivement enchantee." He laughed till the tears came at some of the things he read. This went on till 11.50'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Thomas Hood : 'Faithless Nelly Gray'
'After dinner [during stay at Marlborough College] my father was again asked to read by Mrs Bradley: "Will it be too cruel to ask you to read "The Grandmother?" [...] A Belgian governess, Mdlle. Stapps, was on the chair just behind him. He said, "I can't read 'The Grandmother' properly except after breakfast, when I am weak and tremulous; fortified by dinner and a glass of port I am too vigorous." "Well; read 'The Northern Farmer' then." So he did: and asked Mdlle. how much she understood. "Pas un mot, Monsieur." 'Then he read "The Grandmother," and after that four pieces out of Hood's Whims and Oddities, "Faithless Nelly Gray," "Faithless Sally Brown," "Tim Turpin" and "Ben Battle." He explained the play on words in them to Mdlle. who was "excessivement enchantee." He laughed till the tears came at some of the things he read. This went on till 11.50'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Thomas Hood : 'Faithless Sally Brown'
'After dinner [during stay at Marlborough College] my father was again asked to read by Mrs Bradley: "Will it be too cruel to ask you to read "The Grandmother?" [...] A Belgian governess, Mdlle. Stapps, was on the chair just behind him. He said, "I can't read 'The Grandmother' properly except after breakfast, when I am weak and tremulous; fortified by dinner and a glass of port I am too vigorous." "Well; read 'The Northern Farmer' then." So he did: and asked Mdlle. how much she understood. "Pas un mot, Monsieur." 'Then he read "The Grandmother," and after that four pieces out of Hood's Whims and Oddities, "Faithless Nelly Gray," "Faithless Sally Brown," "Tim Turpin" and "Ben Battle." He explained the play on words in them to Mdlle. who was "excessivement enchantee." He laughed till the tears came at some of the things he read. This went on till 11.50'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Thomas Hood : 'Tim Turpin'
'After dinner [during stay at Marlborough College] my father was again asked to read by Mrs Bradley: "Will it be too cruel to ask you to read "The Grandmother?" [...] A Belgian governess, Mdlle. Stapps, was on the chair just behind him. He said, "I can't read 'The Grandmother' properly except after breakfast, when I am weak and tremulous; fortified by dinner and a glass of port I am too vigorous." "Well; read 'The Northern Farmer' then." So he did: and asked Mdlle. how much she understood. "Pas un mot, Monsieur." 'Then he read "The Grandmother," and after that four pieces out of Hood's Whims and Oddities, "Faithless Nelly Gray," "Faithless Sally Brown," "Tim Turpin" and "Ben Battle." He explained the play on words in them to Mdlle. who was "excessivement enchantee." He laughed till the tears came at some of the things he read. This went on till 11.50'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Thomas Hood : 'Ben Battle'
'After dinner [during stay at Marlborough College] my father was again asked to read by Mrs Bradley: "Will it be too cruel to ask you to read "The Grandmother?" [...] A Belgian governess, Mdlle. Stapps, was on the chair just behind him. He said, "I can't read 'The Grandmother' properly except after breakfast, when I am weak and tremulous; fortified by dinner and a glass of port I am too vigorous." "Well; read 'The Northern Farmer' then." So he did: and asked Mdlle. how much she understood. "Pas un mot, Monsieur." 'Then he read "The Grandmother," and after that four pieces out of Hood's Whims and Oddities, "Faithless Nelly Gray," "Faithless Sally Brown," "Tim Turpin" and "Ben Battle." He explained the play on words in them to Mdlle. who was "excessivement enchantee." He laughed till the tears came at some of the things he read. This went on till 11.50'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Thomas Hood : Whims and Oddities
'After dinner [during stay at Marlborough College] my father was again asked to read by Mrs Bradley: "Will it be too cruel to ask you to read "The Grandmother?" [...] A Belgian governess, Mdlle. Stapps, was on the chair just behind him. He said, "I can't read 'The Grandmother' properly except after breakfast, when I am weak and tremulous; fortified by dinner and a glass of port I am too vigorous." "Well; read 'The Northern Farmer' then." So he did: and asked Mdlle. how much she understood. "Pas un mot, Monsieur." 'Then he read "The Grandmother," and after that four pieces out of Hood's Whims and Oddities, "Faithless Nelly Gray," "Faithless Sally Brown," "Tim Turpin" and "Ben Battle." He explained the play on words in them to Mdlle. who was "excessivement enchantee." He laughed till the tears came at some of the things he read. This went on till 11.50'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
: The Victim, or The Norse Queen
From Emily Tennyson's journal, 17 August 1866: 'We took Lionel [son] to school at Hastings [...] We then left for Park House, Maidstone [...] In the evening, at the Lushingtons' request, A. read "The Victim, or The Norse Queen," "The Voyage," and "All Along the Valley."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
: The Voyage
From Emily Tennyson's journal, 17 August 1866: 'We took Lionel [son] to school at Hastings [...] We then left for Park House, Maidstone [...] In the evening, at the Lushingtons' request, A. read "The Victim, or The Norse Queen," "The Voyage," and "All Along the Valley."'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : In the Valley of Cauteretz
From Emily Tennyson's journal, 17 August 1866: 'We took Lionel [son] to school at Hastings [...] We then left for Park House, Maidstone [...] In the evening, at the Lushingtons' request, A. read "The Victim, or The Norse Queen," "The Voyage," and "All Along the Valley."'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
: 'Take My Love'
From Emily Tennyson's journal, 18 May 1867: 'He [Tennyson] read the new version of one of the "Window Songs," "Take my Love"; Heine's "Songs"; and some of the Reign of Law. The chapter on "Law in Politics" was especially interesting to us. The quotations from A. expressed some of the deepest truths [...] With the boys he was reading Flodden Field, the Prometheus of Aeschylus, and the 1st Georgic.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Heine : Songs
From Emily Tennyson's journal, 18 May 1867: 'He [Tennyson] read the new version of one of the "Window Songs," "Take my Love"; Heine's "Songs"; and some of the Reign of Law. The chapter on "Law in Politics" was especially interesting to us. The quotations from A. expressed some of the deepest truths [...] With the boys he was reading Flodden Field, the Prometheus of Aeschylus, and the 1st Georgic.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Duke of Argyll : The Reign of Law
From Emily Tennyson's journal, 18 May 1867: 'He [Tennyson] read the new version of one of the "Window Songs," "Take my Love"; Heine's "Songs"; and some of the Reign of Law. The chapter on "Law in Politics" was especially interesting to us. The quotations from A. expressed some of the deepest truths [...] With the boys he was reading Flodden Field, the Prometheus of Aeschylus, and the 1st Georgic.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Charlotte M. Yonge :
F. T. Palgrave on a tour of the West Country with Tennyson in late summer 1867: 'Our way lay right across Dartmoor, desolate and eerie even under the brightest sun, to Princetown: a village gloomy in itself [...] The inn, rough and small but clean, was in accord with the surroundings. One bedroom with two huge four-posters was allotted us: and Tennyson lay in his with a candle, reading hard the book which on this trip he had taken for his novel-companion, and at every disengaged moment whilst rambling over the Moor. This chanced to be one of Miss Yonge's deservedly popular tales, wherein a leading element is the deferred Church Confirmation of a grown-up person. On Tennyson read, till I heard him cry with satisfaction, "I see land! Mr ** is just going to be confirmed, after which, darkness and slumber.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
: Book of Job
From Emily Tennyson's journal, 1 December 1867: 'A. is reading Hebrew (Job and the Song of Solomon and Genesis)'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
: Song of Solomon
From Emily Tennyson's journal, 1 December 1867: 'A. is reading Hebrew (Job and the Song of Solomon and Genesis)'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
: Book of Genesis
From Emily Tennyson's journal, 1 December 1867: 'A. is reading Hebrew (Job and the Song of Solomon and Genesis)'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Deutsch : article on the Talmud
From Emily Tennyson's journal, 11 January 1868: 'A. read the article on the Talmud by Deutsch.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
Alfred Tennyson : Enoch Arden
From Emily Tennyson's journal, 17 August 1868: 'Dr Hook asked A. to read "Enoch Arden." He replied he could not to-day. Dr Hook thereupon began in fun to read it so badly that A. clutched the book, "No, I cannot stand that," and read it all to them.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : The San Graal
From Emily Tennyson's journal: 'Sept. 9th. [1868] A. read me a bit of his "San Graal," which he has now begun. 'Sept. 11th. He read me more of the "San Graal": very fine.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Manuscript: Unknown
Alfred Tennyson : The San Graal
From Emily Tennyson's journal: 'Sept. 9th. [1868] A. read me a bit of his "San Graal," which he has now begun. 'Sept. 11th. He read me more of the "San Graal": very fine.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Manuscript: Unknown
Alfred Tennyson : The San Graal
From Emily Tennyson's journal: 'Sept. 23rd. [1868] We took Lionel [son] to Eton, and left him in Mr Stone's house. At Mr Warre's request A. read the "San Graal" MS complete in the garden.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Manuscript: Unknown
Alfred Tennyson : The Holy Grail
From Emily Tennyson's Journal, January 1869: 'A. read "The Holy Grail" to the Bradleys, explaining the realism and symbolism, and how the natural, if people cared, could always be made to account for the supernatural.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Manuscript: Unknown
Alfred Tennyson : 'birth and marriage of "Arthur"'
From Emily Tennyson's Journal, 1869: 'Feb. 13th. A. read what he had done of the birth and marriage of "Arthur."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Manuscript: Unknown
Alfred Tennyson : The Coming of Arthur
From Emily Tennyson's Journal, 1869: 'Before the end of February A. had read me all "The Coming of Arthur" finished, and was reading at night Browning's "Ring and the Book" -- "Pompilia" and "Caponsacchi" are the finest parts.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Manuscript: Unknown
Robert Browning : The Ring and the Book
From Emily Tennyson's Journal, 1869: 'Before the end of February A. had read me all "The Coming of Arthur" finished, and was reading at night Browning's "Ring and the Book" -- "Pompilia" and "Caponsacchi" are the finest parts.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : "The San Graal"
From Emily Tennyson's Journal, 1869: 'May 18th. A. read the "San Graal." I doubt whether the "San Graal" would have been written but for my endeavour, and the Queen's wish, and that of the Crown Princess. Thank God for it. He has had the subject on his mind for years, ever since he began to write about Arthur and his knights.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Manuscript: Unknown
Jonathan Swift : Legion Club
From Frederick Locker-Lampson's recollections of Tennyson: 'Tennyson was greatly impressed by the deadly-earnest and savagery, and let me say [italics]sadness[end italics], of Swift's Legion Club. He has more than once read it to me: on the last occasion, Houghton and George Venables, two great friends [...] were present, and they were also impressed by it.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Jonathan Swift : Legion Club
From Frederick Locker-Lampson's recollections of Tennyson: 'Tennyson was greatly impressed by the deadly-earnest and savagery, and let me say [italics]sadness[end italics], of Swift's Legion Club. He has more than once read it to me: on the last occasion, Houghton and George Venables, two great friends [...] were present, and they were also impressed by it.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Thomas Hood : epigram
From Frederick Locker-Lampson's recollections of Tennyson: 'I have an old commonplace book, into which [...] I had copied an epigram by Thomas Hood. It runs as follows: '"A joke. 'What is a modern poet's fate? To write his thoughts upon a slate; The critic spits on what is done, [italics]Gives it a wipe[end italics] -- and all is gone.' "'T. HOOD." 'This quatrain amused Tennyson, and he said: "It is a good joke, and now I'll write you a grave [italics]truth[end italics]." Which he did as follows, adding the words "a joke" by the side of Hood's lines. '[quotes] A truth. While I live, the owls! When I die, the GHOULS!!!'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Manuscript: Unknown, In hand of Frederick Locker-Lampson, in commonplace book belonging to him.
Alfred Tennyson : Maud
From Frederick Locker-Lampson's recollections of Tennyson: 'I once met Tennyson at dinner at the Conservative Club, in company with Dicky Doyle, Sir J. Emerson Tennent, Sir Arthur Buller [...] and others whom I have forgotten. Tennyson read "Maud" to us and was very gay and companionable.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Maurice : Social Morals
From Emily Tennyson's Journal, 1869: 'Dec. 11th. Farringford. A. read me some of Maurice's Social Morals; "a noble book" it seemed to me, as A. called it.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Samuel Pepys : Diary
From Emily Tennyson's Journal, 1870: 'Nov. 8th. [...] A. read me Pepys' Diary [...] We read about starlings in Morris; I did not know (what A. had put into his Idyll ["The Last Tournament"] by his own observation) that the starlings in June, after they have brought up their young ones, congregate in flocks in a reedy place for the sake of sociability.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
: Edinburgh Royal Society Transactions
From Emily Tennyson's Journal, 1871: 'February. A. [...] read to me some of the Edinburgh Royal Society Transactions.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
Alfred Tennyson : 'Tristram'
From Emily Tennyson's Journal, 1871: 'May 21st. He [Tennyson] read me his "Tristram" ("Last Tournament"), the plan of which he had been for some weeks discussing with me. Very grand and terrible.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Manuscript: Unknown
Alfred Tennyson : 'Guinevere'
From Emily Tennyson's Journal, 1871: 'Aug. 31st. [...] A. drove to the Lewes'. He read to them, and last of all at G. H. Lewes' request "Guinevere," which made George Eliot weep.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
: 'book about Russia'
From Emily Tennyson's Journal, 1871: 'Sept. 1st. A. [...] is very cheerful, and is reading me a book about Russia. He is interested in the strange sects among the Russians, and the character of the Russian peasant and the strong feeling of unity in the nation. He has read and given me to read Fraser's Magazine with suggestive articles on colonial federation, and against the inclosure of commons, against which he has always protested. A general Colonial Council for the purposes of defence sounds to us sensible.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
: Fraser's Magazine
From Emily Tennyson's Journal, 1871: 'Sept. 1st. A. [...] is very cheerful, and is reading me a book about Russia. He is interested in the strange sects among the Russians, and the character of the Russian peasant and the strong feeling of unity in the nation. He has read and given me to read Fraser's Magazine with suggestive articles on colonial federation, and against the inclosure of commons, against which he has always protested. A general Colonial Council for the purposes of defence sounds to us sensible.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Serial / periodical
William Shakespeare :
From Emily Tennyson's Journal, 1872: 'June 22nd. Farringford. Every night A. has read Shakespeare, or Pascal, or Montesquieu (Decadence des Romains).'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Pascal :
From Emily Tennyson's Journal, 1872: 'June 22nd. Farringford. Every night A. has read Shakespeare, or Pascal, or Montesquieu (Decadence des Romains).'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Montesquieu : Decadence des Romains
From Emily Tennyson's Journal, 1872: 'June 22nd. Farringford. Every night A. has read Shakespeare, or Pascal, or Montesquieu (Decadence des Romains).'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Victor Hugo :
From Emily Tennyson's Journal, 1872: 'Aug. 7th. We went to Paris. A. [...] bought and read many volumes of Victor Hugo and Alfred de Musset.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Alfred de Musset :
From Emily Tennyson's Journal, 1872: 'Aug. 7th. We went to Paris. A. [...] bought and read many volumes of Victor Hugo and Alfred de Musset.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
: Le Lendemain de la Mort
From Emily Tennyson's Journal, 1872: 'Sept. 5th. Returned [from Continental travels] by Lausanne and Amiens to Aldworth. A. read Le Lendemain de la Mort on the way.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
: playbill
From Tennyson's 'letter-diary' (1872): 'Nov. 1st. [...] I saw "Bijou" last night, and was ashamed of my countrymen for flocking to such a wretched non-entity, miserable stagey-toned, unmeaning dialogue: only one thing made amends, a young damsel whose dancing was music and poetry. By the bye I read in the bill that one of the actresses was Miss Tennyson. I think it is a fancy name assumed by her.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Handbill
Hinton : The Mystery of Matter
From Emily Tennyson's Journal (1873): 'Oct. 28th. London. 4 Seamore Place. We took up our abode at Seamore Place in the house we shared with Lady Franklin, and A. likes it the best of any house we have had in London. He is reading The Mystery of Matter by Hinton'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Motley : Dutch Republic
'He [Tennyson] had been reading Motley's Dutch Republic.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Harold
Aubrey de Vere to Alfred Tennyson, 28 December 1876: 'I do not like to defer longer sending you my most cordial thanks for sending me your "Harold." I have already read the whole of it twice, and many parts much oftener [...] You know how heartily I admired it when you read it aloud to me: and I can honestly assure you that the admiration has not been less on reading it to myself. On that first occasion it may have derived an advantage from your reading; but if so, the more careful attention one gives to what one reads with one's own eyes fully compensated for whatever was lost. The great characteristic of this drama is to me that of an heroic strength blended with heroic simplicity, and everything in it harmonious with that predominant characteristic [goes on to discuss in detail].'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : Becket
The Right Honourable J. Bryce to Alfred Tennyson: 'As I have been abroad for some time it was only a little while ago that I obtained and read your "Becket." Will you, since you were so kind as to read me some of it last July, let me tell you how much enjoyment and light it has given me? Impressive as were the parts read, it impresses one incomparably more when studied as a whole. One cannot imagine a more vivid, a more perfectly faithful picture than it gives both of Henry and of Thomas. Truth in history is naturally truth in poetry; but you have made the characters of the two men shine out in a way which, while it never deviates from the impression history gives of them, goes beyond and perfects history [continues].'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Honore de Balzac : Le Pere Goriot
'On this journey [to the Western Pyrenees] he took Balzac's novels with him, especially delighting in Le pere Goriot and Eugenie Grandet.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Honore de Balzac : Eugenie Grandet
'On this journey [to the Western Pyrenees] he took Balzac's novels with him, especially delighting in Le pere Goriot and Eugenie Grandet.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Welcome to Alexandra
'My father's first meeting with the Princess of Wales took place at Mrs Greville's in Chester Square. The Princess asked him to read the "Welcome to Alexandra." When he had read it, the fact of his reading his own complimentary poem to the Princess herself suddenly struck both of them as being so ludicrous, that he dropt the book on the floor and both went into fits of uncontrollable laughter.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : The Revenge
'My father was fond of asking Joachim [celebrity violinist] to play to him in his own house. One particular evening I remember, at 86, Eaton Square. My father had been expressing his wonder at Joachim's mastery of the violin, -- for Joachim had been playing to us and our friends numberless Hungarian dances, -- and by way of thanks for the splendid music I asked him to read one of his poems to Joachim. Accordingly after the guests had gone he took the great musician to smoke with him in his "den" at the top of the house [...] my father read "The Revenge." On reaching the line 'And the sun went down, and the stars came out far over the summer sea, he asked Joachim, "Could you do that on your violin?" -- the peace of nature after the thunder of battle. There was no more reading however that night, for he suddenly turned round to me, saying, "I must not read any more, else I shall wake up the cook who is sleeping next door."'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Catullus :
'Miss Ritchie was staying at Farringford when we came back from our foreign [Italian] travels. To her he [Tennyson] dwelt with more pleasure on the row to Desenzano than on almost anything else, and on the associations of Sirmione with Catullus. The long July twlight had at last died away whilst he talked of all he had been seeing, and lights were brought, and I fetched him a volume of Catullus. 'He made Miss Ritchie, who was no Latin scholar, follow the words as he read through some of his favourite poems. His finger moved from word to word, and he dwelt with intense satisfaction on the adequacy of the expression and of the sounds, on the mastery of the proper handling of quantity, and on the perfection of the art.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
: Old Brighton
From Tennyson's manuscript notes on his volume of Ballads and Poems (1880): '"Rizpah" is founded on an incident which I saw thus related in some penny magazine called Old Brighton, lent me by my friend and neighbour Mrs [Mary] Brotherton [goes on to relate account in magazine of Phoebe Hessel, a woman soldier who died at Brighton in 1821, aged 108]'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Serial / periodical
Alfred Tennyson : 'Bones'
[Mary Brotherton writes] 'I told him [Tennyson] the story [of the eighteenth-century woman soldier Phoebe Hessel] one day at Farringford, knowing it would touch him, and he came up to see my husband and me next day, and asked me to tell it him again: on whch I gave him the little penny magazine I found it in. It was an unpretentious account of "Old Brighton." Many months after he took me up to his library, after a walk, and read me what he called "Bones." That was before it was called "Rizpah" and published.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : "The Bugle Song"
From Hallam Tennyson's account of a voyage on the Pembroke Castle (September 1883): '[18 September] In response to an invitation from the hospitable Sir Donald [Currie] the Royalties came to luncheon on board [...] In the small smoking room after luncheon my father, at the request of the Princess of Wales, read "The Bugle Song" and "The Grandmother." The Czarina paid him some very pretty compliment, and he, being very short-sighted, and taking her for a Maid of Honour, patted her on the shoulder and said, "Thank you, my dear."'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : "The Grandmother"
From Hallam Tennyson's account of a voyage on the Pembroke Castle (September 1883): '[18 September] In response to an invitation from the hospitable Sir Donald [Currie] the Royalties came to luncheon on board [...] In the small smoking room after luncheon my father, at the request of the Princess of Wales, read "The Bugle Song" and "The Grandmother." The Czarina paid him some very pretty compliment, and he, being very short-sighted, and taking her for a Maid of Honour, patted her on the shoulder and said, "Thank you, my dear."'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
William Shakespeare : Pericles (Act V)
From Hallam Tennyson's survey of his father's 'Criticisms on Poets and Poetry': 'After reading Pericles, Act v. aloud: '"That is glorious Shakespeare: most of the rest of the play is poor, and not by Shakespeare, but in that act the conception of Marina's character is exquisite."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Locksley Hall
From Phillips Brooks's journal (1883), on a visit to Tennyson's home: 'After dinner, Tennyson and I went up to the study [...] and I had him to myself for two or three hours. We smoked, and he talked of metaphysics, and poetry, and religion, his own life, and Hallam, and all the poems [...] Then we went down to the drawing-room where the rest were, and he read his poetry to us till the clock said twelve -- "Locksley Hall," "Sir Galahad," pieces of "Maud" (which he specially likes to read), and some of his dialect poems. He said, by the way, in reading "Locksley Hall," that the verse beginning 'Love took up, etc 'was the best simile he ever made; and that a certain line in "The Gardener's daughter" were the ones on which he most piqued himself.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : Sir Galahad
From Phillips Brooks's journal (1883), on a visit to Tennyson's home: 'After dinner, Tennyson and I went up to the study [...] and I had him to myself for two or three hours. We smoked, and he talked of metaphysics, and poetry, and religion, his own life, and Hallam, and all the poems [...] Then we went down to the drawing-room where the rest were, and he read his poetry to us till the clock said twelve -- "Locksley Hall," "Sir Galahad," pieces of "Maud" (which he specially likes to read), and some of his dialect poems. He said, by the way, in reading "Locksley Hall," that the verse beginning 'Love took up, etc 'was the best simile he ever made; and that a certain line in "The Gardener's daughter" were the ones on which he most piqued himself.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : Maud (extracts)
From Phillips Brooks's journal (1883), on a visit to Tennyson's home: 'After dinner, Tennyson and I went up to the study [...] and I had him to myself for two or three hours. We smoked, and he talked of metaphysics, and poetry, and religion, his own life, and Hallam, and all the poems [...] Then we went down to the drawing-room where the rest were, and he read his poetry to us till the clock said twelve -- "Locksley Hall," "Sir Galahad," pieces of "Maud" (which he specially likes to read), and some of his dialect poems. He said, by the way, in reading "Locksley Hall," that the verse beginning 'Love took up, etc 'was the best simile he ever made; and that a certain line in "The Gardener's daughter" were the ones on which he most piqued himself.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : 'dialect poems'
From Phillips Brooks's journal (1883), on a visit to Tennyson's home: 'After dinner, Tennyson and I went up to the study [...] and I had him to myself for two or three hours. We smoked, and he talked of metaphysics, and poetry, and religion, his own life, and Hallam, and all the poems [...] Then we went down to the drawing-room where the rest were, and he read his poetry to us till the clock said twelve -- "Locksley Hall," "Sir Galahad," pieces of "Maud" (which he specially likes to read), and some of his dialect poems. He said, by the way, in reading "Locksley Hall," that the verse beginning 'Love took up, etc 'was the best simile he ever made; and that a certain line in "The Gardener's daughter" were the ones on which he most piqued himself.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Roden Noel : poems
Alfred Tennyson to Roden Noel (February 1885): 'Your article in the Contemporary has been sent to me ***. My eyes are very bad. One is entirely gone for all reading purposes, and the other -- I hope it will not fail me utterly before I die; -- but I have looked into your book, and find it full of true poetry -- not concentration enough, perhaps.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
: newspaper report on rescue of child by dog
'On Dec. 15th [1887] "Owd Roa" was finished for press. My father's note on the poem is: "I read in one of the daily papers of a child saved by a black retriever from a burning house. The details of the story are of course mine."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Newspaper
Alfred Tennyson : The Leper's Bride
'1888. At Easter Miss Mary Anderson [actress] was with us again and he [Tennyson] read to her, whom he admired much, and held to be "the flower of girlhood," "The Leper's Bride," just finished.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Manuscript: Unknown
Homer : Iliad
From Hallam Tennyson's account of 'My Father's Illness [1888]': 'He read or had read to him at this time the following books or essays: Leaf's edition of the Iliad; the Iphigenia of Aulis, expressing "wonder at its modernness"; Matthew Arnold on Tolstoi; Fiske's Destiny of Man; Gibbon's History, especially praising the Fall of Constantinople; Keats [sic] poems; Wordsworth's "Recluse." Of this last he said: "I like the passages which have been published before, such as that about the dance of a flock of birds, driven by a thoughtless impulse [...]" 'He often looked at his Virgil, more than ever delighting in what he called "that splendid end of the second Georgic."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Euripides : Iphigenia in Aulis
From Hallam Tennyson's account of 'My Father's Illness [1888]': 'He read or had read to him at this time the following books or essays: Leaf's edition of the Iliad; the Iphigenia of Aulis, expressing "wonder at its modernness"; Matthew Arnold on Tolstoi; Fiske's Destiny of Man; Gibbon's History, especially praising the Fall of Constantinople; Keats [sic] poems; Wordsworth's "Recluse." Of this last he said: "I like the passages which have been published before, such as that about the dance of a flock of birds, driven by a thoughtless impulse [...]" 'He often looked at his Virgil, more than ever delighting in what he called "that splendid end of the second Georgic."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Matthew Arnold : 'on Tolstoi'
From Hallam Tennyson's account of 'My Father's Illness [1888]': 'He read or had read to him at this time the following books or essays: Leaf's edition of the Iliad; the Iphigenia of Aulis, expressing "wonder at its modernness"; Matthew Arnold on Tolstoi; Fiske's Destiny of Man; Gibbon's History, especially praising the Fall of Constantinople; Keats [sic] poems; Wordsworth's "Recluse." Of this last he said: "I like the passages which have been published before, such as that about the dance of a flock of birds, driven by a thoughtless impulse [...]" 'He often looked at his Virgil, more than ever delighting in what he called "that splendid end of the second Georgic."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
John Fiske : The Destiny of Man Viewed in the Light of His Origin
From Hallam Tennyson's account of 'My Father's Illness [1888]': 'He read or had read to him at this time the following books or essays: Leaf's edition of the Iliad; the Iphigenia of Aulis, expressing "wonder at its modernness"; Matthew Arnold on Tolstoi; Fiske's Destiny of Man; Gibbon's History, especially praising the Fall of Constantinople; Keats [sic] poems; Wordsworth's "Recluse." Of this last he said: "I like the passages which have been published before, such as that about the dance of a flock of birds, driven by a thoughtless impulse [...]" 'He often looked at his Virgil, more than ever delighting in what he called "that splendid end of the second Georgic."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Gibbon : History
From Hallam Tennyson's account of 'My Father's Illness [1888]': 'He read or had read to him at this time the following books or essays: Leaf's edition of the Iliad; the Iphigenia of Aulis, expressing "wonder at its modernness"; Matthew Arnold on Tolstoi; Fiske's Destiny of Man; Gibbon's History, especially praising the Fall of Constantinople; Keats [sic] poems; Wordsworth's "Recluse." Of this last he said: "I like the passages which have been published before, such as that about the dance of a flock of birds, driven by a thoughtless impulse [...]" 'He often looked at his Virgil, more than ever delighting in what he called "that splendid end of the second Georgic."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
John Keats : Poems
From Hallam Tennyson's account of 'My Father's Illness [1888]': 'He read or had read to him at this time the following books or essays: Leaf's edition of the Iliad; the Iphigenia of Aulis, expressing "wonder at its modernness"; Matthew Arnold on Tolstoi; Fiske's Destiny of Man; Gibbon's History, especially praising the Fall of Constantinople; Keats [sic] poems; Wordsworth's "Recluse." Of this last he said: "I like the passages which have been published before, such as that about the dance of a flock of birds, driven by a thoughtless impulse [...]" 'He often looked at his Virgil, more than ever delighting in what he called "that splendid end of the second Georgic."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
William Wordsworth : The Recluse
From Hallam Tennyson's account of 'My Father's Illness [1888]': 'He read or had read to him at this time the following books or essays: Leaf's edition of the Iliad; the Iphigenia of Aulis, expressing "wonder at its modernness"; Matthew Arnold on Tolstoi; Fiske's Destiny of Man; Gibbon's History, especially praising the Fall of Constantinople; Keats [sic] poems; Wordsworth's "Recluse." Of this last he said: "I like the passages which have been published before, such as that about the dance of a flock of birds, driven by a thoughtless impulse [...]" 'He often looked at his Virgil, more than ever delighting in what he called "that splendid end of the second Georgic."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Virgil : Georgics (II)
From Hallam Tennyson's account of 'My Father's Illness [1888]': 'He read or had read to him at this time the following books or essays: Leaf's edition of the Iliad; the Iphigenia of Aulis, expressing "wonder at its modernness"; Matthew Arnold on Tolstoi; Fiske's Destiny of Man; Gibbon's History, especially praising the Fall of Constantinople; Keats [sic] poems; Wordsworth's "Recluse." Of this last he said: "I like the passages which have been published before, such as that about the dance of a flock of birds, driven by a thoughtless impulse [...]" 'He often looked at his Virgil, more than ever delighting in what he called "that splendid end of the second Georgic."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Bret Harte : Cressy
From Hallam Tennyson's account 'Of My Father's Illness': 'Jan. 27th. and 28th. [1889] We carried him down for the first time to the drawing-room [...] Read Bret Harte's Cressy.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Plato : The Vision of Er
From Hallam Tennyson's account 'Of My Father's Illness': 'Jan. 29th. [1889] Read the Vision of Er. He pitied Ardiaeus and said, "That is eternal hell which I do not believe." I read to him some of Book II. of the Republic.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : 'Crossing the Bar'
'My father considered Edmund Lushington's translation into Greek of "Crossing the Bar," one of the finest translations he had ever read'.
UnknownCentury: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Benjamin Disraeli : Henrietta Temple
'He [Tennyson] read many novels after his evening's work, and among others he looked through Henrietta Temple again. He had told Disraeli that the "silly sooth" of love was given perfectly there. Lothair he did not admire, "altho' it was written to stir up the English gentry and nobility to be leaders of the people."'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Benjamin Disraeli : Lothair
'He [Tennyson] read many novels after his evening's work, and among others he looked through Henrietta Temple again. He had told Disraeli that the "silly sooth" of love was given perfectly there. Lothair he did not admire, "altho' it was written to stir up the English gentry and nobility to be leaders of the people."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
William Makepeace Thackeray : Henry Esmond
'He [Tennyson] would always talk of Thackeray's novels, Esmond, Pendennis, and The Newcomes as being "delicious; they are so mature. But now the days are so full of false sentiment that, as Thackeray said, one cannot draw a man as he should be." He would read and re-read them as well as Walter Scott's and Miss Austen's novels. His comments on Walter Scott and Miss Austen were: "Scott is the most chivalrous literary figure of this century and the author with the widest range since Shakespeare. I think Old Mortality is his greatest novel. The realism and life-likeness of Miss Austen's Dramatis Personae come nearest to those of Shakespeare. Shakespeare however is a sun to which Jane Austen, tho' a bright and true little world, is but an asteroid."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
William Makepeace Thackeray : Pendennis
'He [Tennyson] would always talk of Thackeray's novels, Esmond, Pendennis, and The Newcomes as being "delicious; they are so mature. But now the days are so full of false sentiment that, as Thackeray said, one cannot draw a man as he should be." He would read and re-read them as well as Walter Scott's and Miss Austen's novels. His comments on Walter Scott and Miss Austen were: "Scott is the most chivalrous literary figure of this century and the author with the widest range since Shakespeare. I think Old Mortality is his greatest novel. The realism and life-likeness of Miss Austen's Dramatis Personae come nearest to those of Shakespeare. Shakespeare however is a sun to which Jane Austen, tho' a bright and true little world, is but an asteroid."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
William Makepeace Thackeray : The Newcomes
'He [Tennyson] would always talk of Thackeray's novels, Esmond, Pendennis, and The Newcomes as being "delicious; they are so mature. But now the days are so full of false sentiment that, as Thackeray said, one cannot draw a man as he should be." He would read and re-read them as well as Walter Scott's and Miss Austen's novels. His comments on Walter Scott and Miss Austen were: "Scott is the most chivalrous literary figure of this century and the author with the widest range since Shakespeare. I think Old Mortality is his greatest novel. The realism and life-likeness of Miss Austen's Dramatis Personae come nearest to those of Shakespeare. Shakespeare however is a sun to which Jane Austen, tho' a bright and true little world, is but an asteroid."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Walter Scott : novels including Old Mortality
'He [Tennyson] would always talk of Thackeray's novels, Esmond, Pendennis, and The Newcomes as being "delicious; they are so mature. But now the days are so full of false sentiment that, as Thackeray said, one cannot draw a man as he should be." He would read and re-read them as well as Walter Scott's and Miss Austen's novels. His comments on Walter Scott and Miss Austen were: "Scott is the most chivalrous literary figure of this century and the author with the widest range since Shakespeare. I think Old Mortality is his greatest novel. The realism and life-likeness of Miss Austen's Dramatis Personae come nearest to those of Shakespeare. Shakespeare however is a sun to which Jane Austen, tho' a bright and true little world, is but an asteroid."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Jane Austen : novels
'He [Tennyson] would always talk of Thackeray's novels, Esmond, Pendennis, and The Newcomes as being "delicious; they are so mature. But now the days are so full of false sentiment that, as Thackeray said, one cannot draw a man as he should be." He would read and re-read them as well as Walter Scott's and Miss Austen's novels. His comments on Walter Scott and Miss Austen were: "Scott is the most chivalrous literary figure of this century and the author with the widest range since Shakespeare. I think Old Mortality is his greatest novel. The realism and life-likeness of Miss Austen's Dramatis Personae come nearest to those of Shakespeare. Shakespeare however is a sun to which Jane Austen, tho' a bright and true little world, is but an asteroid."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Robert Louis Stevenson :
'In respect of contemporary novels he [Tennyson] had a very catholic taste. Latterly he read Stevenson and George Meredith with great interest: also Walter Besant, Black, Hardy, Henry James, Marion Crawford, Anstey, Barrie, Blackmore, Conan Doyle, Miss Braddon, Miss Lawless, Ouida, Miss Broughton, Lady Margaret Majendie, Hall Caine, and Shorthouse. He liked Edna Lyall's Autobiography of a Slander, and the Geier-Wally by Wilhelmina von Hillern; and often gave his friends Surly Tim to read, for its "concentrated pathos." "Mrs Oliphant's prolific work," he would observe, "is amazing, and she is nearly always worth reading."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
George Meredith :
'In respect of contemporary novels he [Tennyson] had a very catholic taste. Latterly he read Stevenson and George Meredith with great interest: also Walter Besant, Black, Hardy, Henry James, Marion Crawford, Anstey, Barrie, Blackmore, Conan Doyle, Miss Braddon, Miss Lawless, Ouida, Miss Broughton, Lady Margaret Majendie, Hall Caine, and Shorthouse. He liked Edna Lyall's Autobiography of a Slander, and the Geier-Wally by Wilhelmina von Hillern; and often gave his friends Surly Tim to read, for its "concentrated pathos." "Mrs Oliphant's prolific work," he would observe, "is amazing, and she is nearly always worth reading."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
Walter Besant :
'In respect of contemporary novels he [Tennyson] had a very catholic taste. Latterly he read Stevenson and George Meredith with great interest: also Walter Besant, Black, Hardy, Henry James, Marion Crawford, Anstey, Barrie, Blackmore, Conan Doyle, Miss Braddon, Miss Lawless, Ouida, Miss Broughton, Lady Margaret Majendie, Hall Caine, and Shorthouse. He liked Edna Lyall's Autobiography of a Slander, and the Geier-Wally by Wilhelmina von Hillern; and often gave his friends Surly Tim to read, for its "concentrated pathos." "Mrs Oliphant's prolific work," he would observe, "is amazing, and she is nearly always worth reading."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
Black :
'In respect of contemporary novels he [Tennyson] had a very catholic taste. Latterly he read Stevenson and George Meredith with great interest: also Walter Besant, Black, Hardy, Henry James, Marion Crawford, Anstey, Barrie, Blackmore, Conan Doyle, Miss Braddon, Miss Lawless, Ouida, Miss Broughton, Lady Margaret Majendie, Hall Caine, and Shorthouse. He liked Edna Lyall's Autobiography of a Slander, and the Geier-Wally by Wilhelmina von Hillern; and often gave his friends Surly Tim to read, for its "concentrated pathos." "Mrs Oliphant's prolific work," he would observe, "is amazing, and she is nearly always worth reading."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
Thomas Hardy :
'In respect of contemporary novels he [Tennyson] had a very catholic taste. Latterly he read Stevenson and George Meredith with great interest: also Walter Besant, Black, Hardy, Henry James, Marion Crawford, Anstey, Barrie, Blackmore, Conan Doyle, Miss Braddon, Miss Lawless, Ouida, Miss Broughton, Lady Margaret Majendie, Hall Caine, and Shorthouse. He liked Edna Lyall's Autobiography of a Slander, and the Geier-Wally by Wilhelmina von Hillern; and often gave his friends Surly Tim to read, for its "concentrated pathos." "Mrs Oliphant's prolific work," he would observe, "is amazing, and she is nearly always worth reading."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
Henry James :
'In respect of contemporary novels he [Tennyson] had a very catholic taste. Latterly he read Stevenson and George Meredith with great interest: also Walter Besant, Black, Hardy, Henry James, Marion Crawford, Anstey, Barrie, Blackmore, Conan Doyle, Miss Braddon, Miss Lawless, Ouida, Miss Broughton, Lady Margaret Majendie, Hall Caine, and Shorthouse. He liked Edna Lyall's Autobiography of a Slander, and the Geier-Wally by Wilhelmina von Hillern; and often gave his friends Surly Tim to read, for its "concentrated pathos." "Mrs Oliphant's prolific work," he would observe, "is amazing, and she is nearly always worth reading."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
Marion Crawford :
'In respect of contemporary novels he [Tennyson] had a very catholic taste. Latterly he read Stevenson and George Meredith with great interest: also Walter Besant, Black, Hardy, Henry James, Marion Crawford, Anstey, Barrie, Blackmore, Conan Doyle, Miss Braddon, Miss Lawless, Ouida, Miss Broughton, Lady Margaret Majendie, Hall Caine, and Shorthouse. He liked Edna Lyall's Autobiography of a Slander, and the Geier-Wally by Wilhelmina von Hillern; and often gave his friends Surly Tim to read, for its "concentrated pathos." "Mrs Oliphant's prolific work," he would observe, "is amazing, and she is nearly always worth reading."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
Anstey :
'In respect of contemporary novels he [Tennyson] had a very catholic taste. Latterly he read Stevenson and George Meredith with great interest: also Walter Besant, Black, Hardy, Henry James, Marion Crawford, Anstey, Barrie, Blackmore, Conan Doyle, Miss Braddon, Miss Lawless, Ouida, Miss Broughton, Lady Margaret Majendie, Hall Caine, and Shorthouse. He liked Edna Lyall's Autobiography of a Slander, and the Geier-Wally by Wilhelmina von Hillern; and often gave his friends Surly Tim to read, for its "concentrated pathos." "Mrs Oliphant's prolific work," he would observe, "is amazing, and she is nearly always worth reading."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
Barrie :
'In respect of contemporary novels he [Tennyson] had a very catholic taste. Latterly he read Stevenson and George Meredith with great interest: also Walter Besant, Black, Hardy, Henry James, Marion Crawford, Anstey, Barrie, Blackmore, Conan Doyle, Miss Braddon, Miss Lawless, Ouida, Miss Broughton, Lady Margaret Majendie, Hall Caine, and Shorthouse. He liked Edna Lyall's Autobiography of a Slander, and the Geier-Wally by Wilhelmina von Hillern; and often gave his friends Surly Tim to read, for its "concentrated pathos." "Mrs Oliphant's prolific work," he would observe, "is amazing, and she is nearly always worth reading."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
R. D. Blackmore :
'In respect of contemporary novels he [Tennyson] had a very catholic taste. Latterly he read Stevenson and George Meredith with great interest: also Walter Besant, Black, Hardy, Henry James, Marion Crawford, Anstey, Barrie, Blackmore, Conan Doyle, Miss Braddon, Miss Lawless, Ouida, Miss Broughton, Lady Margaret Majendie, Hall Caine, and Shorthouse. He liked Edna Lyall's Autobiography of a Slander, and the Geier-Wally by Wilhelmina von Hillern; and often gave his friends Surly Tim to read, for its "concentrated pathos." "Mrs Oliphant's prolific work," he would observe, "is amazing, and she is nearly always worth reading."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
Arthur Conan Doyle :
'In respect of contemporary novels he [Tennyson] had a very catholic taste. Latterly he read Stevenson and George Meredith with great interest: also Walter Besant, Black, Hardy, Henry James, Marion Crawford, Anstey, Barrie, Blackmore, Conan Doyle, Miss Braddon, Miss Lawless, Ouida, Miss Broughton, Lady Margaret Majendie, Hall Caine, and Shorthouse. He liked Edna Lyall's Autobiography of a Slander, and the Geier-Wally by Wilhelmina von Hillern; and often gave his friends Surly Tim to read, for its "concentrated pathos." "Mrs Oliphant's prolific work," he would observe, "is amazing, and she is nearly always worth reading."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
Mary Braddon :
'In respect of contemporary novels he [Tennyson] had a very catholic taste. Latterly he read Stevenson and George Meredith with great interest: also Walter Besant, Black, Hardy, Henry James, Marion Crawford, Anstey, Barrie, Blackmore, Conan Doyle, Miss Braddon, Miss Lawless, Ouida, Miss Broughton, Lady Margaret Majendie, Hall Caine, and Shorthouse. He liked Edna Lyall's Autobiography of a Slander, and the Geier-Wally by Wilhelmina von Hillern; and often gave his friends Surly Tim to read, for its "concentrated pathos." "Mrs Oliphant's prolific work," he would observe, "is amazing, and she is nearly always worth reading."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
Miss Lawless :
'In respect of contemporary novels he [Tennyson] had a very catholic taste. Latterly he read Stevenson and George Meredith with great interest: also Walter Besant, Black, Hardy, Henry James, Marion Crawford, Anstey, Barrie, Blackmore, Conan Doyle, Miss Braddon, Miss Lawless, Ouida, Miss Broughton, Lady Margaret Majendie, Hall Caine, and Shorthouse. He liked Edna Lyall's Autobiography of a Slander, and the Geier-Wally by Wilhelmina von Hillern; and often gave his friends Surly Tim to read, for its "concentrated pathos." "Mrs Oliphant's prolific work," he would observe, "is amazing, and she is nearly always worth reading."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
Ouida :
'In respect of contemporary novels he [Tennyson] had a very catholic taste. Latterly he read Stevenson and George Meredith with great interest: also Walter Besant, Black, Hardy, Henry James, Marion Crawford, Anstey, Barrie, Blackmore, Conan Doyle, Miss Braddon, Miss Lawless, Ouida, Miss Broughton, Lady Margaret Majendie, Hall Caine, and Shorthouse. He liked Edna Lyall's Autobiography of a Slander, and the Geier-Wally by Wilhelmina von Hillern; and often gave his friends Surly Tim to read, for its "concentrated pathos." "Mrs Oliphant's prolific work," he would observe, "is amazing, and she is nearly always worth reading."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
Rhoda Broughton :
'In respect of contemporary novels he [Tennyson] had a very catholic taste. Latterly he read Stevenson and George Meredith with great interest: also Walter Besant, Black, Hardy, Henry James, Marion Crawford, Anstey, Barrie, Blackmore, Conan Doyle, Miss Braddon, Miss Lawless, Ouida, Miss Broughton, Lady Margaret Majendie, Hall Caine, and Shorthouse. He liked Edna Lyall's Autobiography of a Slander, and the Geier-Wally by Wilhelmina von Hillern; and often gave his friends Surly Tim to read, for its "concentrated pathos." "Mrs Oliphant's prolific work," he would observe, "is amazing, and she is nearly always worth reading."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
Lady Margaret Majendie :
'In respect of contemporary novels he [Tennyson] had a very catholic taste. Latterly he read Stevenson and George Meredith with great interest: also Walter Besant, Black, Hardy, Henry James, Marion Crawford, Anstey, Barrie, Blackmore, Conan Doyle, Miss Braddon, Miss Lawless, Ouida, Miss Broughton, Lady Margaret Majendie, Hall Caine, and Shorthouse. He liked Edna Lyall's Autobiography of a Slander, and the Geier-Wally by Wilhelmina von Hillern; and often gave his friends Surly Tim to read, for its "concentrated pathos." "Mrs Oliphant's prolific work," he would observe, "is amazing, and she is nearly always worth reading."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
Hall Caine :
'In respect of contemporary novels he [Tennyson] had a very catholic taste. Latterly he read Stevenson and George Meredith with great interest: also Walter Besant, Black, Hardy, Henry James, Marion Crawford, Anstey, Barrie, Blackmore, Conan Doyle, Miss Braddon, Miss Lawless, Ouida, Miss Broughton, Lady Margaret Majendie, Hall Caine, and Shorthouse. He liked Edna Lyall's Autobiography of a Slander, and the Geier-Wally by Wilhelmina von Hillern; and often gave his friends Surly Tim to read, for its "concentrated pathos." "Mrs Oliphant's prolific work," he would observe, "is amazing, and she is nearly always worth reading."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
Shorthouse :
'In respect of contemporary novels he [Tennyson] had a very catholic taste. Latterly he read Stevenson and George Meredith with great interest: also Walter Besant, Black, Hardy, Henry James, Marion Crawford, Anstey, Barrie, Blackmore, Conan Doyle, Miss Braddon, Miss Lawless, Ouida, Miss Broughton, Lady Margaret Majendie, Hall Caine, and Shorthouse. He liked Edna Lyall's Autobiography of a Slander, and the Geier-Wally by Wilhelmina von Hillern; and often gave his friends Surly Tim to read, for its "concentrated pathos." "Mrs Oliphant's prolific work," he would observe, "is amazing, and she is nearly always worth reading."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
Edna Lyall : Autobiography of a Slander
'In respect of contemporary novels he [Tennyson] had a very catholic taste. Latterly he read Stevenson and George Meredith with great interest: also Walter Besant, Black, Hardy, Henry James, Marion Crawford, Anstey, Barrie, Blackmore, Conan Doyle, Miss Braddon, Miss Lawless, Ouida, Miss Broughton, Lady Margaret Majendie, Hall Caine, and Shorthouse. He liked Edna Lyall's Autobiography of a Slander, and the Geier-Wally by Wilhelmina von Hillern; and often gave his friends Surly Tim to read, for its "concentrated pathos." "Mrs Oliphant's prolific work," he would observe, "is amazing, and she is nearly always worth reading."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
Wilhelmina von Hillern : Geier-Wally
'In respect of contemporary novels he [Tennyson] had a very catholic taste. Latterly he read Stevenson and George Meredith with great interest: also Walter Besant, Black, Hardy, Henry James, Marion Crawford, Anstey, Barrie, Blackmore, Conan Doyle, Miss Braddon, Miss Lawless, Ouida, Miss Broughton, Lady Margaret Majendie, Hall Caine, and Shorthouse. He liked Edna Lyall's Autobiography of a Slander, and the Geier-Wally by Wilhelmina von Hillern; and often gave his friends Surly Tim to read, for its "concentrated pathos." "Mrs Oliphant's prolific work," he would observe, "is amazing, and she is nearly always worth reading."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
Frances Hodgson Burnett : Surly Tim: A Lancashire Story
'In respect of contemporary novels he [Tennyson] had a very catholic taste. Latterly he read Stevenson and George Meredith with great interest: also Walter Besant, Black, Hardy, Henry James, Marion Crawford, Anstey, Barrie, Blackmore, Conan Doyle, Miss Braddon, Miss Lawless, Ouida, Miss Broughton, Lady Margaret Majendie, Hall Caine, and Shorthouse. He liked Edna Lyall's Autobiography of a Slander, and the Geier-Wally by Wilhelmina von Hillern; and often gave his friends Surly Tim to read, for its "concentrated pathos." "Mrs Oliphant's prolific work," he would observe, "is amazing, and she is nearly always worth reading."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
Margaret Oliphant :
'In respect of contemporary novels he [Tennyson] had a very catholic taste. Latterly he read Stevenson and George Meredith with great interest: also Walter Besant, Black, Hardy, Henry James, Marion Crawford, Anstey, Barrie, Blackmore, Conan Doyle, Miss Braddon, Miss Lawless, Ouida, Miss Broughton, Lady Margaret Majendie, Hall Caine, and Shorthouse. He liked Edna Lyall's Autobiography of a Slander, and the Geier-Wally by Wilhelmina von Hillern; and often gave his friends Surly Tim to read, for its "concentrated pathos." "Mrs Oliphant's prolific work," he would observe, "is amazing, and she is nearly always worth reading."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
Alfred Tennyson : Ode on the Duke of Wellington
From Hallam Tennyson's journal (1890-91): 'May 28th. [1890] G. F. Watts left today, having done a fine portrait of my father [...] At the request of Watts, my father read the "Ode on the Duke of Wellington" [...] I read "The Golden Bough" and the "Story of a Balaclava Hero" to Watts and my father, while the portrait was in hand.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : Guinevere
From Hallam Tennyson's journal, 1890-91: 'Aug. 6th. [1890] Aldworth. The Duchess of Albany came to luncheon with us in honour of my father's eighty-first birthday [...] At her request he read "Guinevere" aloud."
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Ode on the Duke of Wellington
'In April [1891] the President of Magdalen, Oxford, and Mrs Warren called upon us [...] Mrs Richard Ward, who had joined us, wanted her little boy to hear my father read. My father answered, "I will only read you something old." He read the "Ode on the Duke of Wellington." He dwelt long on the final words, letting them ring so to speak, especially "toll'd, Boom." At the end he said, "It is a great roll of words, the music of words. For a hundred people who can sing a song, there are not ten who can read a poem. People do not understand the music of words." He then read the little Dedication to "OEnone," then the poem. He explained the story, pausing from time to time, asking a few questions'.
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : Dedication, OEnone
'In April [1891] the President of Magdalen, Oxford, and Mrs Warren called upon us [...] Mrs Richard Ward, who had joined us, wanted her little boy to hear my father read. My father answered, "I will only read you something old." He read the "Ode on the Duke of Wellington." He dwelt long on the final words, letting them ring so to speak, especially "toll'd, Boom." At the end he said, "It is a great roll of words, the music of words. For a hundred people who can sing a song, there are not ten who can read a poem. People do not understand the music of words." He then read the little Dedication to "OEnone," then the poem. He explained the story, pausing from time to time, asking a few questions'.
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : OEnone
'In April [1891] the President of Magdalen, Oxford, and Mrs Warren called upon us [...] Mrs Richard Ward, who had joined us, wanted her little boy to hear my father read. My father answered, "I will only read you something old." He read the "Ode on the Duke of Wellington." He dwelt long on the final words, letting them ring so to speak, especially "toll'd, Boom." At the end he said, "It is a great roll of words, the music of words. For a hundred people who can sing a song, there are not ten who can read a poem. People do not understand the music of words." He then read the little Dedication to "OEnone," then the poem. He explained the story, pausing from time to time, asking a few questions'.
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Sir Edward Reed : 'lines on the Fleet'
'My father spoke at this time [1891] warmly of the gallant spirit of Sir Edward Reed's lines on the Fleet in the St James' Gazette; and said he liked much of Wallace's Darwinism, which he was reading.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Serial / periodical
Alfred Russel Wallace : Darwinism: An Exposition of the Theory of Natural Selection with Some of its Applications
'My father spoke at this time [1891] warmly of the gallant spirit of Sir Edward Reed's lines on the Fleet in the St James' Gazette; and said he liked much of Wallace's Darwinism, which he was reading.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book, Serial / periodical
William Watson : 'Wordsworth's Grave'
'One of the last letters my father wrote during this year [1891] was to the young poet William Watson, whose "Wordsworth's Grave" pleased him.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Rudyard Kipling : 'The English Flag'
'One of the last letters my father wrote during this year [1891] was to the young poet William Watson, whose "Wordsworth's Grave" pleased him [...] He praised too Mr Rudyard Kipling's "English Flag," and Kipling's answer to his letter of commendation gave him pleasure: "When the private in the ranks is praised by the general, he cannot presume to thank him, but he fights the better next day."'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : The Lotos-Eaters
'In January [1892] Dr Hubert Parry stayed with us at Farringford, for he wanted to hear my father read "The Lotos-Eaters" which he was setting to music. 'For the first time my father's voice, usually so strong, failed while reading this poem and the "Ode on the Duke of Wellington," which he was anxious that a great composer should set as he read it.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : Ode on the Duke of Wellington
'In January [1892] Dr Hubert Parry stayed with us at Farringford, for he wanted to hear my father read "The Lotos-Eaters" which he was setting to music. 'For the first time my father's voice, usually so strong, failed while reading this poem and the "Ode on the Duke of Wellington," which he was anxious that a great composer should set as he read it.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : The Passing of Arthur
'In March [1892] he [Tennyson] recovered his voice [which had failed him during January] [...] He read "The Passing of Arthur" to Lord Houghton (now Lord Crewe) and his sister, Mrs Henniker, as well as ever'.
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : Maud (extracts)
'On one of these June mornings [in 1892], Miss L----, who was a stranger to us, but whose brother we had known for some time, called upon us. My father took her over the bridge to the summer-house looking on the Down. After a little while he said: "Miss L----, my son says I am to read to you," and added, "I will read whatever you like." He read some of "Maud," "The Spinster's Sweet-Arts," and some "Enoch Arden." 'His voice, as Miss L---- noticed, was melodious and full of change, and quite unimpaired by age. There was a peculiar freshness and passion in his reading of "Maud," giving the impression that he had just written the poem, and that the emotion which created it was fresh in him [...] 'He thoroughly enjoyed reading his "The Spinster's Sweet-Arts," and when he was reading "Enoch Arden" he told Miss L---- to listen to the sound of the sea in the line 'The league-long roller thundering on the reef'.
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : The Spinster's Sweet-Arts
'On one of these June mornings [in 1892], Miss L----, who was a stranger to us, but whose brother we had known for some time, called upon us. My father took her over the bridge to the summer-house looking on the Down. After a little while he said: "Miss L----, my son says I am to read to you," and added, "I will read whatever you like." He read some of "Maud," "The Spinster's Sweet-Arts," and some "Enoch Arden." 'His voice, as Miss L---- noticed, was melodious and full of change, and quite unimpaired by age. There was a peculiar freshness and passion in his reading of "Maud," giving the impression that he had just written the poem, and that the emotion which created it was fresh in him [...] 'He thoroughly enjoyed reading his "The Spinster's Sweet-Arts," and when he was reading "Enoch Arden" he told Miss L---- to listen to the sound of the sea in the line 'The league-long roller thundering on the reef'. 'His voice, as Miss L---- noticed, was melodious and full of change, and quite unimpaired by age. There was a peculiar freshness and passion in hiis reading of "Maud," giving the impression that he had just ridden the poem, and that the emotion which created it was fresh in him [...] 'He thoroughly enjoyed reading his "The Spinster's Sweet-Arts," and when he was reading "Enoch Arden" he told Miss L---- to listen to the sound of the sea in the line 'The league-long roller thundering on the reef'.
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : Enoch Arden (extracts)
'On one of these June mornings [in 1892], Miss L----, who was a stranger to us, but whose brother we had known for some time, called upon us. My father took her over the bridge to the summer-house looking on the Down. After a little while he said: "Miss L----, my son says I am to read to you," and added, "I will read whatever you like." He read some of "Maud," "The Spinster's Sweet-Arts," and some "Enoch Arden." 'His voice, as Miss L---- noticed, was melodious and full of change, and quite unimpaired by age. There was a peculiar freshness and passion in his reading of "Maud," giving the impression that he had just written the poem, and that the emotion which created it was fresh in him [...] 'He thoroughly enjoyed reading his "The Spinster's Sweet-Arts," and when he was reading "Enoch Arden" he told Miss L---- to listen to the sound of the sea in the line 'The league-long roller thundering on the reef'.
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Dalmon : poems
'In the beginning of September [1892], though feeling very ill, my father looked over a book of poems at the earnest entreaty of a stranger, Mr Dalmon, and made one or two criticisms. He crossed out Mr Dalmon's despairing words about poetry -- "[italics]The end is failure[end italics]" -- saying to him: "How can there be failure, if the divine speak through the human, be it through the voice of prince or peasant?"'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
: article on Keats and Wordsworth
From Hallam Tennyson's accounts of 'Last Talks' with his father: 'While reading an article in the Spectator on blank verse, he observed: "I have been reading in the Spectator that Wordsworth and Keats are great masters of blank verse, who are also great in rhyme. Keats was not a master of blank verse. It might be true of Wordsworth at his best. Blank verse can be the finest mode of expression in our language."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Serial / periodical
Sully Prudhomme : L'Agonie
From Hallam Tennyson's accounts of 'Last Talks' with his father: '"'L'Agonie' by Sully Prudhomme I have just been reading, and think it very beautiful, yet very sad; and there are things of Alfred de Musset like 'Tristesse' which seem to me perfect."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
Alfred de Musset : poems including 'Tristesse'
From Hallam Tennyson's accounts of 'Last Talks' with his father: '"'L'Agonie' by Sully Prudhomme I have just been reading, and think it very beautiful, yet very sad; and there are things of Alfred de Musset like 'Tristesse' which seem to me perfect."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
Amiel : Journal Intime
'In 1885 he [Tennyson] came across Amiel's Journal Intime, and thought his criticisms on Hugo and literature in general good; but that the Journal throughout was too morbid for anything. 'The modern French poets were read by him with great interest. The last French poems he read were by Coppee, and by Jean Aicard.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Coppee : poems
'In 1885 he [Tennyson] came across Amiel's Journal Intime, and thought his criticisms on Hugo and literature in general good; but that the Journal throughout was too morbid for anything. 'The modern French poets were read by him with great interest. The last French poems he read were by Coppee, and by Jean Aicard.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
Jean Aicard : poems
'In 1885 he [Tennyson] came across Amiel's Journal Intime, and thought his criticisms on Hugo and literature in general good; but that the Journal throughout was too morbid for anything. 'The modern French poets were read by him with great interest. The last French poems he read were by Coppee, and by Jean Aicard.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
: Book of Job
From Hallam Tennyson's account of his father's last days: 'On Sept. 3rd [1892] he complained of weakness and of pain in his jaw [...] 'On Wednesday the 29th we telegraphed for Sir Andrew Clark [?physician] [...] 'He read Job, and St Matthew, and Miss Swanwick's new book on Poets as the Interpreters of the Age. Sir Andrew arrived, and did not think so badly of him as I did. He and my father fell to discussing Gray's "Elegy."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
St Matthew : Gospel
From Hallam Tennyson's account of his father's last days: 'On Sept. 3rd [1892] he complained of weakness and of pain in his jaw [...] 'On Wednesday the 29th we telegraphed for Sir Andrew Clark [?physician] [...] 'He read Job, and St Matthew, and Miss Swanwick's new book on Poets as the Interpreters of the Age. Sir Andrew arrived, and did not think so badly of him as I did. He and my father fell to discussing Gray's "Elegy."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Anna Swanwick : Poets, The Interpreters of the Age
From Hallam Tennyson's account of his father's last days: 'On Sept. 3rd [1892] he complained of weakness and of pain in his jaw [...] 'On Wednesday the 29th we telegraphed for Sir Andrew Clark [?physician] [...] 'He read Job, and St Matthew, and Miss Swanwick's new book on Poets as the Interpreters of the Age. Sir Andrew arrived, and did not think so badly of him as I did. He and my father fell to discussing Gray's "Elegy."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
William Shakespeare : King Lear, Cymbeline, Troilus and Cressida
From Hallam Tennyson's account of his father's last days: 'On Sept. 3rd [1892] he complained of weakness and of pain in his jaw [...] 'On Wednesday the 29th we telegraphed for Sir Andrew Clark [?physician] [...] 'He read Job, and St Matthew, and Miss Swanwick's new book on Poets as the Interpreters of the Age. Sir Andrew arrived, and did not think so badly of him as I did. He and my father fell to discussing Gray's "Elegy" [...] 'On Friday my wife read him an article in the Times on the colonization of Uganda, for which he asked [...] 'On Monday morning at eight o'clock he sent me for his Shakespeare. I took him Steevens's edition, Lear, Cymbeline, and Troilus and Cressida, three plays which he loved dearly. 'He read two or three lines, and told Dr Dabbs that he should never get well again. We asked him later whether he felt better: he answered, "The doctor says I am." At his request I read some Shakespeare to him'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
William Shakespeare :
From Hallam Tennyson's account of his father's last day: 'At 2 o'clock [p.m., on Wednesday 5 October 1892] he again asked for his Shakespeare and lay with his hand resting on it open, and tried to read it [...] His last food was taken at a quarter to four, and he tried to read, but could not.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
William Shakespeare :
From Hallam Tennyson's account of his father's last day: 'At 2 o'clock [p.m., on Wednesday 5 October 1892] he again asked for his Shakespeare and lay with his hand resting on it open, and tried to read it [...] His last food was taken at a quarter to four, and he tried to read, but could not.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Songs for inclusion in new edition of The Princess
From F. T. Palgrave's 'Personal Recollections' of Tennyson: 'On March 31st 1849, through the kindness of Henry Hallam, youngest son to the great historian [...] I was asked to meet Tennyson at the house of Hallam's cousin by marriage, W. H. Brookfield, in Portman Street [...] 'At that time the two green volumes of 1842, with "The Princess" in its first form (1847), had been to me, as to thousands more, Gateways into a new Paradise [...]I have preserved no memory of Tennyson during this evening. But at the close, discovering that our routes homeward began in the same direction [...] we set forth together [...] parting with an [Tennyson's] invitation to visit him in his lodgings [...] 'Two days after [...] I accordingly climbed to the upper floor of the lodgings, one of a few houses fronting the Hampstead Road, just south of Mornington Crescent, and found Tennyson in a somewhat dingy room, sitting close over the fire, with many short black pipes in front, and a stout jar of tobacco by his side [...] Tennyson offered to read me certain poems he had written about [Arthur] Hallam [...] He then brought forth a bundle of beautifully copied verse: the name "In Memoriam" I do not think he used; and read several pieces. One was No. CIII "On that last night...," [...] others from the early series describing the ship sailing "from the Italian shore" (No. IX): and that, I think, where parents or sweetheart await a son's or a lover's return. 'Poetry so rich and concentrated as this, and heard now for the first time from the lips of one who loved and mourned so deeply, I could but partly grasp, and knew not how to praise aright. But Tennyson's sweet-natured kindness, when he could give pleasure [...] I have never found exhaustible: and taking up one of those note-books [...] he went on to read certain songs which he thought he might do well to place between the sections of "The Princess." Thus "Sweet and low," "The splendour falls," "Ask me no more" [...] passed before me; giving the sense of some great and splendid procession slowly unrolling itself, and that to the sound of its own music.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Manuscript: Unknown
Alfred Tennyson : Ode on the Duke of Wellington
From F. T. Palgrave's 'Personal Recollections' of Tennyson: 'Some time in 1852 Tennyson read over to me his "Ode on the Duke of Wellington," discussing various points of detail. I think this was the sole occasion upon which, moved by the greatness of the man and of the memories which that colossal career called forth, the national sorrow and the loss of heroic example, he showed a certain anxiety about his own work. Yet he need not have feared. Heroism, at least since the days of Pindar or of Virgil, surely has never been sung of so heroically.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
: Moallakat
From F. T. Palgrave's 'Personal Recollections' of Tennyson: '[William Gifford] [...], meeting Tennyson for the first time, ventured to remark on the truth of [Locksley Hall] [...] to Arabian sentiment and manner [...] Tennyson [...] told us that "Locksley Hall" had, in fact, been "suggested by reading Sir William Jones' prose translation of the old Arabian Moallakat": a famous collection from the work of pre-Mahommedan poets.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Theocritus : Hylas
From F. T. Palgrave's 'Personal Recollections' of Tennyson: 'We were sitting (1857 or so) late at night in the Farringford attic-room [...] and Tennyson read over to me the little Theocritan Idyll "Hylas" [goes on to describe the reading further]'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Homer :
From F. T. Palgrave's 'Personal Recollections' of Tennyson: 'Often, I believe, as life advanced, he would renew earlier familiarity with the great poets of all time [...] Thus a portable copy of Homer which some friend had given him he had in his hands on our Cornish journey (1860), and kept sitting down to read as we wandered over a wild rock-island in the Scillies.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Pindar :
From F. T. Palgrave's 'Personal Recollections' of Tennyson: 'Often, I believe, as life advanced, he would renew earlier familiarity with the great poets of all time [...] One evening [...] he read out off-hand Pindar's great picture of the life of Heaven in the second Olympian into pure modern prose, splendidly lucid and musical.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Andrew Marvell : 'The Emigrant's Song'
From F. T. Palgrave's 'Personal Recollections' of Tennyson: 'I had put the scheme of my Golden Treasury before him during a walk near to Land's End in the late summer of 1860 [...] at the Christmas-tide following, the gathered materials [...] were laid before Tennyson for final judgement [...] With most by far of the pieces submitted he was already acquainted: but I seem to remember more of less special praise of Lodge's "Rosaline," of "My Love in her attire...": and the "Emigrant's Song" by Marvell. For some poems by that writer then with difficulty accessible, he had a special admiration: delighting to read, with a voice hardly yet to me silent, and dwelling more than once, on the magnificent hyperbole, the powerful union of pathos and humour in the lines "To his coy Mistress" [...] 'After reading Cowper's "Poplar Field": "People nowadays, I believe, hold this style and metre light; I wish there were any who could put words together with such exquisite flow and evenness." Presently we reached the same poet's stanzas to Mary Unwin. He read them, yet could barely read them, so deeply was he touched by their tender, their almost agonising pathos.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Andrew Marvell : 'To His Coy Mistress
From F. T. Palgrave's 'Personal Recollections' of Tennyson: 'I had put the scheme of my Golden Treasury before him during a walk near to Land's End in the late summer of 1860 [...] at the Christmas-tide following, the gathered materials [...] were laid before Tennyson for final judgement [...] With most by far of the pieces submitted he was already acquainted: but I seem to remember more of less special praise of Lodge's "Rosaline," of "My Love in her attire...": and the "Emigrant's Song" by Marvell. For some poems by that writer then with difficulty accessible, he had a special admiration: delighting to read, with a voice hardly yet to me silent, and dwelling more than once, on the magnificent hyperbole, the powerful union of pathos and humour in the lines "To his coy Mistress" [...] 'After reading Cowper's "Poplar Field": "People nowadays, I believe, hold this style and metre light; I wish there were any who could put words together with such exquisite flow and evenness." Presently we reached the same poet's stanzas to Mary Unwin. He read them, yet could barely read them, so deeply was he touched by their tender, their almost agonising pathos.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Cowper : 'Poplar Field'
From F. T. Palgrave's 'Personal Recollections' of Tennyson: 'I had put the scheme of my Golden Treasury before him during a walk near to Land's End in the late summer of 1860 [...] at the Christmas-tide following, the gathered materials [...] were laid before Tennyson for final judgement [...] With most by far of the pieces submitted he was already acquainted: but I seem to remember more of less special praise of Lodge's "Rosaline," of "My Love in her attire...": and the "Emigrant's Song" by Marvell. For some poems by that writer then with difficulty accessible, he had a special admiration: delighting to read, with a voice hardly yet to me silent, and dwelling more than once, on the magnificent hyperbole, the powerful union of pathos and humour in the lines "To his coy Mistress" [...] 'After reading Cowper's "Poplar Field": "People nowadays, I believe, hold this style and metre light; I wish there were any who could put words together with such exquisite flow and evenness." Presently we reached the same poet's stanzas to Mary Unwin. He read them, yet could barely read them, so deeply was he touched by their tender, their almost agonising pathos.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Cowper : 'stanzas to Mary Unwin'
From F. T. Palgrave's 'Personal Recollections' of Tennyson: 'I had put the scheme of my Golden Treasury before him during a walk near to Land's End in the late summer of 1860 [...] at the Christmas-tide following, the gathered materials [...] were laid before Tennyson for final judgement [...] With most by far of the pieces submitted he was already acquainted: but I seem to remember more of less special praise of Lodge's "Rosaline," of "My Love in her attire...": and the "Emigrant's Song" by Marvell. For some poems by that writer then with difficulty accessible, he had a special admiration: delighting to read, with a voice hardly yet to me silent, and dwelling more than once, on the magnificent hyperbole, the powerful union of pathos and humour in the lines "To his coy Mistress" [...] 'After reading Cowper's "Poplar Field": "People nowadays, I believe, hold this style and metre light; I wish there were any who could put words together with such exquisite flow and evenness." Presently we reached the same poet's stanzas to Mary Unwin. He read them, yet could barely read them, so deeply was he touched by their tender, their almost agonising pathos.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Petrarch : "Trionfo della Morte"
From F. T. Palgrave's 'Personal Recollections' of Tennyson: 'I had put the scheme of my Golden Treasury before him during a walk near to Land's End in the late summer of 1860 [...] at the Christmas-tide following, the gathered materials [...] were laid before Tennyson for final judgement [...] With most by far of the pieces submitted he was already acquainted: but I seem to remember more of less special praise of Lodge's "Rosaline," of "My Love in her attire...": and the "Emigrant's Song" by Marvell. For some poems by that writer then with difficulty accessible, he had a special admiration: delighting to read, with a voice hardly yet to me silent, and dwelling more than once, on the magnificent hyperbole, the powerful union of pathos and humour in the lines "To his coy Mistress" [...] 'After reading Cowper's "Poplar Field": "People nowadays, I believe, hold this style and metre light; I wish there were any who could put words together with such exquisite flow and evenness." Presently we reached the same poet's stanzas to Mary Unwin. He read them, yet could barely read them, so deeply was he touched by their tender, their almost agonising pathos [...] Petrarch [...] furnished a not dissimilar instance, in the ethereally-beautiful lines on the death of Laura ("Trionfa della Morte," Cap.1) [quotes six lines] [...] I remember still the tenderness with which he dwelt on the words, the sigh of delight -- almost, perhaps, the tears -- that came naturally to the sensitive soul, as he ended'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Geoffrey Chaucer : The Knight's Tale
From F. T. Palgrave's 'Personal Recollections' of Tennyson: 'I had put the scheme of my Golden Treasury before him during a walk near to Land's End in the late summer of 1860 [...] at the Christmas-tide following, the gathered materials [...] were laid before Tennyson for final judgement [...] With most by far of the pieces submitted he was already acquainted: but I seem to remember more of less special praise of Lodge's "Rosaline," of "My Love in her attire...": and the "Emigrant's Song" by Marvell. For some poems by that writer then with difficulty accessible, he had a special admiration: delighting to read, with a voice hardly yet to me silent, and dwelling more than once, on the magnificent hyperbole, the powerful union of pathos and humour in the lines "To his coy Mistress" [...] 'After reading Cowper's "Poplar Field": "People nowadays, I believe, hold this style and metre light; I wish there were any who could put words together with such exquisite flow and evenness." Presently we reached the same poet's stanzas to Mary Unwin. He read them, yet could barely read them, so deeply was he touched by their tender, their almost agonising pathos [...] Petrarch [...] furnished a not dissimilar instance, in the ethereally-beautiful lines on the death of Laura ("Trionfa della Morte," Cap.1) [quotes six lines] [...] I remember still the tenderness with which he dwelt on the words, the sigh of delight -- almost, perhaps, the tears -- that came naturally to the sensitive soul, as he ended [...] 'And Petrarch's own contemporary English admirer [...] supplied Tennyson with another favourite passage; that in the "Knight's Tale," where Arcite, dying, commends his soul as a legacy to his love Emilie [quotes five lines] 'It is with a doubly pathetic echo that the tone, amorously lingering, which [sic] this dear friend always rendered Chaucer's last line ["Alone withouten any compagnie"] now returns to me.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Scott : The Maid of Neidpath
From F. T. Palgrave's 'Personal Recollections' of Tennyson: 'Another little poem [collected in Palgrave's "Golden Treasury"] greatly moved him: perhaps he was not very familiar with it: Scott's "Maid of Neidpath." This also he read, adding after the last stanza, "Almost more pathetic than a man has the right to be."'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
John Milton : Paradise Lost (book IV)
From F. T. Palgrave's 'Personal Recollections' of Tennyson: 'Shakespeare and Milton [...] he read aloud by preference: always coming to Paradise Lost with manifest pleasure and reverent admiration [...] I may name [...] the great vision of Eden (Book IV. 205-311), which he read aloud at Ardtornish in Morvern (August, 1853), and often afterwards; dwelling always upon the peculiar grace of lines 246-263.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe : 'Nachgefuhl'
From F. T. Palgrave's 'Personal Recollections' of Tennyson: 'Tennyson often spoke of Goethe, in regard to his poetry. Much might be inferior: but as a lyrist certain pieces put him in the first rank. Among these favourites, which he gladly would read, were the "Nachgefuhl": "Der Abschied," admired for its exquisite tenderness: he had les larmes dans la voix by the time he reached the second stanza [...] and perhaps even more did he prize the beautiful song "An den Mond," where I find he has in my copy tremulously pencil-marked the last two stanzas'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe : 'Der Abschied'
From F. T. Palgrave's 'Personal Recollections' of Tennyson: 'Tennyson often spoke of Goethe, in regard to his poetry. Much might be inferior: but as a lyrist certain pieces put him in the first rank. Among these favourites, which he gladly would read, were the "Nachgefuhl": "Der Abschied," admired for its exquisite tenderness: he had les larmes dans la voix by the time he reached the second stanza [...] and perhaps even more did he prize the beautiful song "An den Mond," where I find he has in my copy tremulously pencil-marked the last two stanzas'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe : 'An den Mond'
From F. T. Palgrave's 'Personal Recollections' of Tennyson: 'Tennyson often spoke of Goethe, in regard to his poetry. Much might be inferior: but as a lyrist certain pieces put him in the first rank. Among these favourites, which he gladly would read, were the "Nachgefuhl": "Der Abschied," admired for its exquisite tenderness: he had les larmes dans la voix by the time he reached the second stanza [...] and perhaps even more did he prize the beautiful song "An den Mond," where I find he has in my copy tremulously pencil-marked the last two stanzas'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe : poem on seeing Schiller's skull
From F. T. Palgrave's 'Personal Recollections' of Tennyson: 'Tennyson often spoke of Goethe, in regard to his poetry [...] Another poem, valued for its stately beauty and tender feeling for a friend, was that upon Schiller's skull; which he read out in the Inn at York (1853)'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
George Meredith : 'Love in a Valley'
From F. T. Palgrave's 'Personal Recollections' of Tennyson: 'In G. Meredith's first little volume he was delighted by the "Love in a Valley" (as printed in 1851: the text in later issues has been greatly changed)'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
Alfred Tennyson : Locksley Hall Sixty Years After
From F. T. Palgrave's 'Personal Recollections' of Tennyson: 'On October 27th, 1886, he read aloud to me that piece of almost too terrible beauty, the "Locksley Hall Sixty Years After," in which he has concentrated a wealth of thought and observance of life'.
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson : Ulysses
From F. T. Palgrave's 'Personal Recollections' of Tennyson: 'In Nov. 1888 I visited Aldworth shortly after death had suddenly carried off my dearly-loved adventurous brother [William] Gifford (September 30) at Montevideo [...] Tennyson now read to me the beautiful lines named "Ulysses" after the title of my brother's last narrative of travel: a commemoration the honour of which he did not live to enjoy.'
UnknownCentury: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson
Sir John Herschel : 'Book I. of the Iliad translated in the Hexameter Metre'
'The note by my father, that originally headed his blank verse translation from the Iliad beginning 'He ceased, and sea-like roar'd the Trojan host, 'ran: "Some, and among these one at least of our best and greatest, have endeavoured to give us the Iliad in English hexameters, and by what appears to me their failure have gone far to prove the impossibility of the task [...]" [...] This was written after reading Sir John Herschel's "Book I. of the Iliad translated in the Hexameter Metre," Cornhill Magazine, May 1862.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Serial / periodical
Alfred Tennyson : poem on the Holy Grail
From Alfred Tennyson's letter-diary to his family (1868): 'November. The Hollies, Clapham Common. I have sent the "Grail" to be [italics]printed[end italics] [...] I read it last night to Strahan and Pritchard, who professed themselves delighted.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Manuscript: Unknown
Ivan Turgenev : Lisa
From Emily Tennyson's journal (1871): 'June. Aldworth. Tourgueneff [sic] the Russian novelist (whose Lisa and Pere et Enfants A. liked much) and Mr Ralston arrived. Tourgeueneff (a tall, large, white-haired man with a strong face) was most interesting, and told us stories of Russian life with a great graphic power and vivacity.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
Ivan Turgenev : Fathers and Sons
From Emily Tennyson's journal (1871): 'June. Aldworth. Tourgueneff [sic] the Russian novelist (whose Lisa and Pere et Enfants A. liked much) and Mr Ralston arrived. Tourgeueneff (a tall, large, white-haired man with a strong face) was most interesting, and told us stories of Russian life with a great graphic power and vivacity.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
George Eliot : Adam Bede
From Emily Tennyson's journal (1871): 'July 14th. A. travelled down from London with G. H. Lewes, who took him to his house at Witley and introduced him to Mrs Lewes (George Eliot) [...] He likes her Adam Bede, Scenes of Clerical Life, Silas Marner best of her novels. Romola he thinks somewhat out of her depth.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
George Eliot : Scenes of Clerical Life
From Emily Tennyson's journal (1871): 'July 14th. A. travelled down from London with G. H. Lewes, who took him to his house at Witley and introduced him to Mrs Lewes (George Eliot) [...] He likes her Adam Bede, Scenes of Clerical Life, Silas Marner best of her novels. Romola he thinks somewhat out of her depth.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
George Eliot : Silas Marner
From Emily Tennyson's journal (1871): 'July 14th. A. travelled down from London with G. H. Lewes, who took him to his house at Witley and introduced him to Mrs Lewes (George Eliot) [...] He likes her Adam Bede, Scenes of Clerical Life, Silas Marner best of her novels. Romola he thinks somewhat out of her depth.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
George Eliot : Romola
From Emily Tennyson's journal (1871): 'July 14th. A. travelled down from London with G. H. Lewes, who took him to his house at Witley and introduced him to Mrs Lewes (George Eliot) [...] He likes her Adam Bede, Scenes of Clerical Life, Silas Marner best of her novels. Romola he thinks somewhat out of her depth.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Unknown
Alfred Tennyson : Morte d'Arthur
3 November 1857: 'In the evening we all went over to the Camerons [i.e. Charles Hay, and Julia Margaret Cameron]. Several Pre-Raphaelite artists were there to meet Tennyson [...] When they were all gone Tennyson read us his own Morte d'Arthur, and that really was a pleasure. It is a poem I have always been very fond of.'
