Alfred Lord Tennyson, (1809-1892) was acknowledged as a renowned poet. In “Poetry Criticism” Michelle Lee claims that poets such as T.S. Eliot and W.H Auden, praised him for having a “fine ear” (par.1). Lee continues by stating that Tennyson’s career spanned for more than sixty years, and was considered as the “embodiment of the Victorian Age, despite his obvious dept to Classicism and Romanticism and his affinities with Modernism” (par. 1). Some of Tennyson’s more popular works include In Memoriam (1850)  Idylls of the King (1859) and Ulysses (1833). William Fredeman and Ira Nadal explain how though Tennyson was the poetic spokesman for the reign of Queen Victoria, and he was called to positively acknowledge the changes in the industrial and mercantile world, he felt saddened and disconnected to this rural England (par.1). Fredeman and Nadal continue by stating how Tennyson felt the divide between duty and his allegiance to the beauty of nature (par. 1).

In Virginia Woolf’s Orlando Tennyson’s name is mentioned in addition to a few other famous writers “...Tennyson, Browning, Carlyle!’—he threw an immense amount of scorn into his voice. ‘The truth of it is,’ he said, pouring himself a glass of wine, ‘that all our young writers are in the pay of booksellers. They turn out any trash that serves to pay their tailor’s bills” (278). Here Sir Nicholas is voicing his own opinions about literature, but it begins to affect Orlando and he makes him feel “unaccountably disappointed” (279). Orlando is heavily influenced by writers, and continues to have changing perspectives about them as the novel progresses. 

"Alfred, Lord Tennyson." Poetry Criticism, edited by Michelle Lee, vol. 101, Gale, 2010. Gale Literature Resource Center, link.gale.com/apps/doc/VVKKFZ766455290/LitRC?u=sand82993&sid=LitRC&xid=f9bde926. Accessed 28 May 2021.

"Alfred Tennyson." Victorian Poets Before 1850, edited by William E. Fredeman and Ira Bruce Nadel, Gale, 1984. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 32. Gale Literature Resource Center, link.gale.com/apps/doc/H1200003729/LitRC?u=sand82993&sid=LitRC&xid=7a3a6184. Accessed 28 May 2021