Alfred Tennyson: Poems, Dates and the Browning Mix-Up

Put “Locksley Hall” and “The Pied Piper of Hamelin” side by side in an options list and a surprising number of students pick the wrong poet. One is Tennyson, the other is Robert Browning, and the examiners know that the two names blur together in revision. They were contemporaries, both wrote dramatic monologues, both wrote long narrative poems, and both were reading the same Victorian anxieties about faith and science. The way out is not to memorise more. It is to learn Tennyson’s work in a few clear clusters, so that a title either belongs to him or it does not.

This guide does exactly that: the volumes with dates, the dozen poems that keep coming back, the questions the site has already collected on him, and the traps that cost marks.

Asked in: UGC NET English, State SET, GATE (English), KVS and State PGT/TGT, UP PGT (Tennyson is on the syllabus) and Assistant Professor recruitment exams.

Why examiners keep coming back to Tennyson

Tennyson is the poet the Victorian period is usually measured against. That makes him a convenient anchor for question setters: a single item can test the period (faith and doubt after the new geology), the form (dramatic monologue or elegy) and the line itself. Look at the British poetry previous year questions on this site and you will find more than a dozen items that turn on him, either as the answer or as the distractor.

Three kinds of question cover almost everything:

• Line to poem. “‘Tis better to have loved and lost”, “The old order changeth”, “Theirs not to reason why”. You must place the line in the right poem, not just the right poet.
• Form. Is “Ulysses” a dramatic monologue? Is In Memoriam a pastoral elegy? Is The Princess a lyric? These look easy and are where marks go missing.
• Attribution swaps. Tennyson poems placed among Browning, Arnold or Elizabeth Barrett Browning titles, or the other way round.

My advice: do not try to read every Tennyson poem. Learn the volumes below with their years, then the twelve poems in the notes section. That covers what has actually been asked.

Tennyson’s volumes and major poems, in order

One date pattern is worth fixing in memory: 1833. Hallam died suddenly in Vienna that year, and Tennyson began the sections that became In Memoriam, drafted “Ulysses” and drafted “Tithon”. None of these was printed in 1833. “Ulysses” waited until 1842, “Tithonus” until 1860, and In Memoriam until 1850.

The twelve poems that carry most of the marks

1. In Memoriam A.H.H. (1850)

An elegy for Arthur Henry Hallam, his Cambridge friend, written over about seventeen years and printed anonymously. It runs to 133 sections counting the prologue and epilogue. The stanza is four lines of iambic tetrameter rhyming abba, now called the In Memoriam stanza. Famous lines: “‘Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all” (section 27) and “Nature, red in tooth and claw” (section 56). It is an elegy, but not a pastoral one: no shepherds, no classical mourners.

2. Ulysses (written 1833, published 1842)

A dramatic monologue in blank verse. The aged king, back on Ithaca, decides to sail again and leaves the kingdom to his son Telemachus. Last line: “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” It opens with “It little profits that an idle king”. If an option says terza rima or satire, it is wrong.

3. Tithonus (published 1860)

Also a dramatic monologue, spoken by the mortal lover of the Dawn who was granted eternal life but not eternal youth. Opening: “The woods decay, the woods decay and fall”. Tennyson himself described it as a pendant to “Ulysses”: one speaker wants more life, the other wants release from it.

4. The Lotos-Eaters (1832)

Ulysses’ sailors land on the island of the lotos and lose the will to go home. It opens “‘Courage!’ he said, and pointed toward the land” and moves into the “Choric Song”. The mood is drugged rest, the exact opposite of “Ulysses”.

5. The Lady of Shalott (1832, revised 1842)

A ballad of the lady who may see Camelot only in a mirror; when she looks directly at Lancelot, the curse falls. Opening: “On either side the river lie / Long fields of barley and of rye”. Remember there are two versions, and the familiar one is from 1842.

6. The Palace of Art (1832)

An allegory of a soul that builds itself a palace of beauty and shuts out humanity, then breaks down. Examiners describe it as Tennyson’s condemnation of art pursued for its own sake, cut off from duty to others.

7. Morte d’Arthur (1842) and Idylls of the King (1859–1885)

“Morte d’Arthur” gives Bedivere’s account of Arthur’s passing and holds the line “The old order changeth, yielding place to new”. Tennyson later built it into “The Passing of Arthur”, the final idyll. The Idylls follow the plan of the Arthurian stories, from the coming of Arthur to the collapse of the Round Table.

8. Locksley Hall (1842)

A dramatic monologue in long rhyming couplets: a young man, rejected by his cousin Amy, revisits the hall and turns his bitterness into visions of the future. Its sequel came in 1886. File it firmly under Tennyson, never Browning.

9. The Princess: A Medley (1847)

A narrative poem about a princess who founds a university for women. Its inset songs, such as “Tears, Idle Tears” and “Sweet and Low”, are often anthologised separately, which is why students mislabel the whole work a lyric.

10. Maud (1855)

Tennyson’s own label was monodrama: a single unstable speaker moving through love, a duel, madness and recovery. “Come into the garden, Maud” is the line to know.

11. The Charge of the Light Brigade (1854)

A response to the disastrous cavalry charge at Balaclava in the Crimean War. “Theirs not to reason why, / Theirs but to do and die” and “Into the valley of Death / Rode the six hundred.”

12. Crossing the Bar (1889)

A short lyric on death as a calm sea voyage, ending in the hope of seeing “my Pilot face to face”. Its attitude to death is hope, not resignation.

Two more names turn up as answers: Enoch Arden (1864) for the marooned sailor and “The Defence of Lucknow” (1880) on the siege of Lucknow in 1857. If you are also revising the Romantics who shaped him, the John Keats guide is the natural companion; Tennyson’s early lushness owes a lot to Keats.

Questions the site has already collected on Tennyson

Every item below comes from a published question page on Limitless Literature. Where the page names the exam and year, it is shown; otherwise it is marked as a previous year question.

The same pages also ask who wrote “The Defence of Lucknow” (Tennyson) and which narrative poem tells of a marooned fisherman turned sailor (Enoch Arden). For the full sets, open the Victorian poets question page, or browse the topic-wise previous year questions and the complete previous year question papers.

Honours and firsts: the laureate’s record

Questions on Tennyson’s honours are short and factual, so they are cheap marks if you have the dates straight.

• 1829: Chancellor’s Gold Medal at Cambridge for “Timbuctoo”. At Trinity College he was also a member of the Cambridge Apostles, the society Hallam belonged to as well.
• 1850: the busiest year of his life. In Memoriam appeared, he married Emily Sellwood on 13 June, and in November he was appointed Poet Laureate in succession to Wordsworth, who had died that April.
• 1850–1892: laureate for over four decades, until his death. “Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington” (1852) and “The Charge of the Light Brigade” belong to this public role.
• 1884: created Baron Tennyson, having accepted the peerage at Gladstone’s urging in 1883. He had earlier declined a baronetcy. This is why exam options print “Alfred, Lord Tennyson” and why you will see “A. L. Tennyson” in older papers.
• 1892: buried in Westminster Abbey.

A useful link for comparison questions: Matthew Arnold, his younger contemporary, never held the laureateship but wrote the criticism that shaped how Victorian poetry was judged. The Matthew Arnold guide covers “Dover Beach”, Thyrsis and the touchstone method, all of which sit next to Tennyson in option lists.

Afterlife: painters, novelists and the questions they create

Tennyson’s subjects travelled well beyond poetry, and a few of these crossings have turned into exam items or distractors.

• The Pre-Raphaelites. The 1857 illustrated edition of his poems published by Edward Moxon drew on painters of the Pre-Raphaelite circle, and “The Lady of Shalott” became one of their favourite subjects. John William Waterhouse painted her more than once, most famously in 1888.
• Agatha Christie. The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side (1962) takes its title from “The Lady of Shalott”. A nice cross-period recall item.
• A. S. Byatt’s Possession. The novel’s two invented Victorian poets are usually read as modelled on Robert Browning and Christina Rossetti. Tennyson appears as a distractor in the question on this, so read the options carefully.
• Arthurian revival. Idylls of the King did more than any other Victorian work to put Arthur back at the centre of English imagination, which is why Arthurian questions so often lead back to him rather than to Malory alone.

Thomas Hardy, writing in the generation after Tennyson, is the opposite case: a poet of doubt without consolation. If you are revising Victorian poetry as a block, read the Thomas Hardy guide straight after this one.

Traps that cost marks

1. Tennyson or Browning? “Locksley Hall” and “The Lady of Shalott” are Tennyson’s. “Abt Vogler”, “The Pied Piper of Hamelin”, “Two in the Campagna” and “The Last Ride Together” are Browning’s. Both wrote dramatic monologues, so form will not save you; the title list will.
2. “The old order changeth”. The line first appears in “Morte d’Arthur” (1842), which was later absorbed into “The Passing of Arthur” in Idylls of the King. If only one of the two appears in the options, pick it. If both appear, the question is badly set; the earlier poem is the line’s first home.
3. Elegy is not pastoral elegy. In Memoriam is an elegy. Lycidas (Milton), Adonais (Shelley) and Thyrsis (Arnold) are pastoral elegies. For Shelley’s elegy on Keats, see the Shelley guide.
4. “Ulysses” is blank verse. It is not terza rima, not a satire, and not morbid. It is a dramatic monologue about going forward.
5. “Tithonus” is not an 1842 poem. It was drafted in 1833 but not printed until 1860. Students who group it with “Ulysses” by date get this wrong.
6. Arnold’s works in Tennyson’s place. Sohrab and Rustum and the touchstone method belong to Matthew Arnold. Tennyson appears as an option in both questions on the site.

Self-test: five questions

FAQ

Which Tennyson poems should I study first?

In Memoriam, “Ulysses”, “Tithonus”, “The Lotos-Eaters”, “The Lady of Shalott” and “Morte d’Arthur”. Most line and form questions come from these six.

Is Tennyson on the UP PGT English syllabus?

Yes. He is one of the syllabus poets, alongside Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley and Hardy. The UP PGT English hub lists the full set.

Who was A.H.H. in In Memoriam?

Arthur Henry Hallam, Tennyson’s close friend from Cambridge, who died suddenly in Vienna in 1833.

Which Tennyson poems are dramatic monologues?

“Ulysses”, “Tithonus” and “Locksley Hall” are the ones exams use. Maud is a monodrama, which is related but not the same label.

For a fuller biography and selected poems, see Tennyson’s page at the Academy of American Poets. For other writers, go to the English literature authors A–Z.