Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Significant Works

Earlier collections of poems, 1830-42, included Œnone, a lament on the origins of the Trojan War, and Ulysses, both monologues, as well as Locksley Hall.

The Princess was a blank verse fantasy narrative around a theme of women's education, supposedly improvised by seven men in sequence, with interspersed lyrics.

In Memoriam, 1850, was an extensive elegy on his friend A H Hallam, written over a long period following Hallam's death in 1833.

Maud, a monodrama, expressing a morbid pessimism, but containing some of Tennyson's best lyrics, appeared in 1855. The volume in which it came out also included The Charge of the Light Brigade.

Arthurian poems: Even before the Idylls of the King, Tennyson's earlier collections of short poems included some based on the Arthurian legend, including The Lady of Shalott, Morte d'Arthur, Sir Galahad, and Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere. These were in a variety of stanzaic forms. The first four Idylls, independent tales in blank verse, appeared in 1859, the next five in 1869, with another three following.

Crossing the Bar, one of his strongest lyrics, was written shortly before his death