A New Tennyson
What justifies writing a new biography of an author whose life story has been often told?
New material—manuscripts, diaries, letters—may create the basis for a new interpretation—Lyndall Gordon’s book about T.S. Eliot’s early life, Eliot’s Early Years, or Quentin Bell’s Virginia Woolf: A Biography. Different understanding of a social or cultural context can give new shape to a life, as in Ruby V. Redinger’s biography George Eliot: The Emergent Self, with its attention to gender, or Neil McKenna’s The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde, with its emphasis on sexuality.
Writers can bring together existing and known materials in a powerful new interpretation of the life and work of an author, such as Hermione Lee’s books on Virginia Woolf or Edith Wharton.
And some biographers love the challenge of retelling a good story, like the life of Charles Dickens. John Batchelor’s new biography of Tennyson, Tennyson: To Strive, To Seek, To Find,[1]presents itself as a new interpretation of Tennyson’s life and career, presenting him as “stronger, more self-reliant, more businesslike, tougher, and more centrally Victorian than previous biographies.”
Biographers of eminent Victorians face a particular challenge. Many Victorian writers keenly resented the curiosity of the public about their private lives. Julia Cameron wrote of Tennyson that “he believed that every crime and vice of the world were connected with the passion for autographs and anecdotes and records,—that the desiring anecdotes and acquaintance with the lives of great men was treating them like pigs to be ripped open for the public; that he knew he himself should be ripped open like a pig; that he thanked God Almighty with his whole heart and soul that he knew nothing, and that the world knew nothing, of Shakespeare but his writings; and that he thanked God Almighty that he knew nothing of Jane Austen, and that there were no letters preserved either of Shakespeare’s or of Jane Austen’s, that they had not been ripped open like pigs.” To avoid such a sanguinary fate, Victorian writers, including Tennyson, frequently destroyed letters and papers and took great care to curate their posthumous biographies, not only appointing a biographer, but collaborating in the writing before they died. Thomas Hardy himself wrote most of his biography; when it was published after his death, its authorship was attributed to his wife. Tennyson chose his son Hallam as his biographer and talked frequently with Hallam in the decade before his death about what he wanted his son to include.
Hallam’s biography, Alfred Lord Tennyson: A Memoir (1897), is consequently almost a hagiography (although an invaluable source for subsequent biographers).
Biographers of eminent Victorians face a particular challenge. Many Victorian writers keenly resented the curiosity of the public about their private lives. Julia Cameron wrote of Tennyson that “he believed that every crime and vice of the world were connected with the passion for autographs and anecdotes and records,—that the desiring anecdotes and acquaintance with the lives of great men was treating them like pigs to be ripped open for the public; that he knew he himself should be ripped open like a pig; that he thanked God Almighty with his whole heart and soul that he knew nothing, and that the world knew nothing, of Shakespeare but his writings; and that he thanked God Almighty that he knew nothing of Jane Austen, and that there were no letters preserved either of Shakespeare’s or of Jane Austen’s, that they had not been ripped open like pigs.” To avoid such a sanguinary fate, Victorian writers, including Tennyson, frequently destroyed letters and papers and took great care to curate their posthumous biographies, not only appointing a biographer, but collaborating in the writing before they died. Thomas Hardy himself wrote most of his biography; when it was published after his death, its authorship was attributed to his wife. Tennyson chose his son Hallam as his biographer and talked frequently with Hallam in the decade before his death about what he wanted his son to include.
Hallam’s biography, Alfred Lord Tennyson: A Memoir (1897), is consequently almost a hagiography (although an invaluable source for subsequent biographers).
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