Lord Alfred Tennyson was the major poet of his age. In 1850, he succeeded William Wordsworth as Queen Victoria's Poet Laurete, and this book begins and ends with Tennyson's direct contacts with the Queen, whom Tennyson had first came to know at audience at an Osborne House on the Isle of Wight in 1862. John Batchelor's enthralling new biography presents a Tennyson who is stronger, more self-reliant, and more business-like than previous biographies have displayed. Like many successful Victorians he was a provincial determined to make good in the capital while retaining his provincial strengths; in his particular case he never lost his Lincolnshire accent and in his relationships he remained close to his roots. At the same time and through his Laureteship, he determined the literary taste of the mid-to late Victorian period; and then, strategically, and with a secure instinct for the market, he fed that taste. The ascendancy of Tennyson was neither the irresistible triumph of pure genius nor an accident of history; he skilfully crafted his own career and his relationship with his audience.
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