Emily Tennyson: The Poet's Wife

Description

It was as a small girl in Lincolnshire that Emily Sellwood first saw the boy Alfred Tennyson. Nearly thirty years later, in the year he became Poet Laureate, they married. What kept them apart and what eventually brought them together has never before been fully explored. This major biography radically alters the picture of the poet's relationship with his wife, establishing in detail the person Emily Tennyson was. It is the story of a remarkable family as well as a remarkable woman, bringing into the foreground a neglected and often misunderstood character a century after her death. 'Meeting Emily Tennyson in the pages of Thwaite's enthralling book is pure delight.' Sunday Express 'A finely and deeply researched work, and clearly a labour of love ...She tells an ever absorbing story, and throws much light on that fascinating social area in which high art and worldly power meet.' The Times 'This fat and well-documented book will quickly establish its place in bibliographies of essential Tennyson background.' Literary Review 'A magnificent, surprising biography.' Lynne Truss, Mail on Sunday

Born in London, Ann Thwaite spent the war years in New Zealand, returning to complete her education at Queen Elizabeth's, Barnet, and St Hilda's College, Oxford. She has lived in Tokyo, Benghazi and Nashville, Tennessee. She has lectured in many countries, but most of her life has been spent as a writer, and she is now settled in Norfolk with her husband, the poet Anthony Thwaite. She is an Oxford D.Litt, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Her previous biographies are Waiting for the Party, a life of Frances Hodgson Burnett; Edmund Gosse (winner of the Duff Cooper Award, 1985); A. A. Milne (Whitbread Biography of the Year in 1990); and Emily Tennyson: The Poet's Wife.$$$Ann Thwaite celebrated her seventieth birthday in the week of the publication of Glimpses of the Wonderful, which she says is her final biography. She plans now to use her biographical skills on her own life, in a book tentatively titled 'My Side of the Story'.