Selected Poems

‘Into the jaw of Death Into the mouth of Hell Rode the six hundred’

As Poet Laureate during much of Queen Victoria’s reign, Alfred Lord Tennyson’s spellbinding poetry epitomized the Victorian age. The works in this volume trace nearly sixty years of his literary careerand show the wide variety of poetic forms he mastered. This selection gives some of Tennyson’s most famous works in full, including Maud , depicting a tragic love affair, and In Memoriam , a profound tribute to his dearest friend. Excerpts from Idylls of the King show a lifelong passion for Arthurian legend, also seen in the dream-like The Lady of Shalot and in Morte d’Arthur . Other works respond to contemporary events, such as Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington , written in Tennyson’s official role as Poet Laureate, or the patriotic Charge of the Light Brigade , while Locksley Hall provides a Utopian vision of the future, and the late poem Crossing the Bar is a haunting meditation on his own mortality.

Selected Poems  is edited with an introduction and notes by Christopher Ricks. In his introduction, Ricks discusses aspects of Tennyson’s life and works, his revisions of his poems, and his friendship with Arthur Hallam. This edition also includes a chronology, further reading and notes.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.