Emily Tennyson: The Poet's Wife - Softcover

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. Readers who know little about Tennyson, as well as admirers of his poetry, will find interest in this biography of a Victorian wife who was determined to be fully involved in the work of the man she loved. Drawing on a great deal of unpublished material, Ann Thwaite presents a much more unconventional, energetic and passionate woman than the pale invalid lying on a sofa somewhere in the background of Tennyson's life. This pioneering biography establishes 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.

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'.