Excerpt from Tennyson

Alfred Tennyson "came into his own" in 1850, when he had already passed his fortieth year. It was then that In Memoriam was published, in some doubt as to its reception, and without the author's name on the title-page. Poetry had ceased to be cared for except by the usual "fit, though few, " and the line of great poets was believed to have come to an end. Keats, who, said Tennyson, "with his high spiritual vision, would have been, had he lived, the greatest of us all, " died in 1821, and Byron, who was present at the burning of Shelley's body on the beach at San Reggio a year later, himself died, not unheroically, in 1824. Coleridge passed away, in somewhat premature old age, ten years after Byron, and Wordsworth, venerably old and profoundly honoured, reached his peaceful end in the memorable year in which In Memoriam saw the light.

At this time, Robert Browning, although he had already produced much of his finest work, had no general public, and was being written about as a poet "who found some eulogists, but few readers."

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.