  Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-92) was, of course, the quintessential
Victorian poet, and one who provided subjects for a seemingly endless stream of
paintings. Tennyson's first major success, The Idylls of the King (1859) (derived from Malory's Morte
d'Arthur) inspired the medieval side of the Pre-Raphaelite movement; and his brand of
romanticism, although building on Wordsworth, Byron and, in particular, Keats,
had a sharpened focus which further aligned him with the PRB's concerns. However, many members of the
next generation, such as Waterhouse, also
fell under Tennyson's spell.
Tennyson was a friend of the Prinseps, and in the 1850s they all relocated from London to the
Isle of Wight, where the poet acquired and extended a house overlooking
Freshwater Bay. It is now a Tennyson-themed hotel (right).
Freshwater soon became a magnet for celebrity hunters and so Tennyson built a
second house in Haslemere in the 1860s,
where he spent the summers and where he eventually died.
There is a good on-line
collection of Tennyson's poetry, with a time-line of the poet's life.
|
