Overview

*LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE* A dazzling new biography of young Tennyson by the prize-winning, bestselling author of The Age of Wonder. Alfred Lord Tennyson is now remembered – if he is remembered at all – as the gloomily bearded Poet Laureate, author of such clanking Victorian works as ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’, and the mournful author of the lugubrious elegy In Memoriam. In this dazzling new biography, Richard Holmes reawakens this somnolent Victorian figure, brings him back to sparkling life, and unexpectedly transforms him. From the prize-winning and bestselling biographer of Shelley and Coleridge, and author of the landmark, critically acclaimed THE AGE OF WONDER, Holmes recovers in Young Tennyson an astonishingly magnetic and mercurial personality, a secretly expressive and highly emotional man but now haunted by the great intellectual – and above all the great scientific – issues of his time. The brilliant child of an obscure dysfunctional Lincolnshire family, terrorised by a drunken father, torn by unhappy love affairs but sustained by vivid friendships (especially that of Edward FitzGerald, the author of ‘Omar Khayyam’) Young Tennyson emerges in his first forty years as a memorable poet, hypnotically musical (‘The Lady of Shalott’) yet intensely engaged with the new astronomy, geology, biology – and even the psychiatry – of the age before Darwin. Tennyson’s imagination and intellect were haunted by the eruption of three new fundamentally transformative scientific ideas – biological evolution, the notion of a godless, unpitying universe and of planetary extinction. These were as terrifying to Tennyson as climate catastrophe is to us today. Their impact brought him into contact with the life and scientific work of William Whewell (originally his university tutor), the astronomer John Herschel, the geologist Charles Lyell, the mathematician Mary Somerville, the computer pioneer Charles Babbage, and the brilliant science populariser Robert Chambers. He also shared his visions and anxieties with contemporary writers and social commentators like Thomas Carlyle and Charles Dickens, and poets like Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Edgar Allan Poe. Tennyson’s work during these ‘vagrant years’ is suffused with an unsuspected and strangely modern magic. Holmes’s extraordinary biography allows us to witness Tennyson wrestling with mind-altering ideas of geology and deep time, the vastness, beauty and terror of the new cosmology, and the challenges of social revolution. And how these inspired him to grapple with the idea of human mortality, the threat of suicide and depression, the struggle between love and loneliness, agnosticism and belief.

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9780007386932

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Reviews

‘A glorious blend of the scientific and the literary that deserves to carry off armfuls of awards and confirms Holmes's reputation as one on the stellar biographers of the age.’ Dominic Sandbrook, Daily Telegraph, Books of the Year ‘No question – the non-fiction book of the year is Richard Holmes's “The Age of Wonder”, not only beautifully written, but also kicking open a new perspective on the Romantic age.’ Andrew Marr, Observer, Books of the Year ‘Exuberant…Holmes suffuses his book with the joy, hope and wonder of the revolutionary era. Reading it is like a holiday in a sunny landscape, full of fascinating bypaths that lead to unexpected vistas…it succeeds inspiringly.’ John Carey, Sunday Times ‘Itself a wonder – a masterpiece of skilful and imaginative storytelling.’ Michael Holroyd, Guardian Books of the Year ‘Dazzling and approachable. It's a brilliantly written account…original in its connections and very generous in its attention.’ Andrew Motion, Guardia Books of the Year ‘Witty, intellectually dazzling and wholly gripping.’ Richard Mabey, Guardian, Books of the Year ‘So immediate and so beguiling is Holmes's prose that we are with him all the way.’ Sunday Telegraph ‘Brimming with anecdote, Holmes's enthusiastic narrative amply conveys the period's spirited, often reckless pursuit of discovery with an astute balance of technical detail and the wider cultural picture.’ Financial Times 'Rich and sparkling, this is a wonderful book’ Claire Tomalin, Guardian, Books of the Year ‘Thrilling: a portrait of bold adventure among the stars, across the oceans, deep into matter, poetry and the human psyche.’ Peter Forbes, Independent

PRAISE FOR THIS LONG PURSUIT ‘No biographer is better than Holmes at evoking the thrill of the chase….elegant ….fascinating…entrancing' Sunday Telegraph 'Exhilarating…instructive and delightful…finely observed…generous and hugely enjoyable' Daily Telegraph 'Romanticism and Science are justly reunited in Richard Holmes's new book….a revelation….thrilling' Independent ""Vividly conveys the compelling fusion of art and science in the 18th century…his is a book to linger over, to savour the tantalising details of the minor figures…’The Age of Wonder' allows readers to recapture the combined thrill of emerging scientific order and imaginative creativity"" Financial Times 'Wonderfully engaging…Holmes brilliantly illuminates the human and subjective aspects of science-making' Scotsman “The Age of Wonder gives us…a new model for scientific exploration and poetic expression in the Romantic period. Informative and invigorating, generous and beguiling, it is, indeed, wonderful” Guardian ""delicious…exuberant and thought-provoking"" New Statesman

'An extraordinary glimpse into the nature of poetic genius and the heart of the Victorian miracle – no-one can match Holmes’ range and sensitivity' Rory Stewart ‘What a book this is. Embracingly humane with its motifs of stars and rocks, love and grief, friendship and rivalry, genius and doubt rippling out at beautifully orchestrated intervals. It is symphonic’ Adam Nicolson ‘An intimate and meticulous portrait … This is an outstanding work of scholarship, both of the poet and his craft and of the intellectually restless age in which he lived. It is, too, as you’d expect from this inspired biographer – engrossing, challenging and poignant’ Jim Crace ‘I have not been reading as much as inhaling The Boundless Deep. Richard Holmes’s Coleridge books have been my model for the best literary biography, but his Tennyson exceeds that. The writing and insights are the kind I would hope to find in a first-rate novelist' Amanda Craig

Author Information

Richard Holmes was born in London in 1945 and educated at Downside School and Churchill College, Cambridge. In 1974 his Shelley: The Pursuit won the Somerset Maugham Award and was described by Stephen Spender as 'surely the best biography of Shelley ever written'. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, was awarded an OBE in 1992 and the Biographers' Club Lifetime Services to Biography Prize in 2014. He lives in London and Norwich with the novelist Rose Tremain.

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