Tennyson's Gift - Softcover

Truss, Lynne

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1861977131 ISBN 13: 9781861977137

Publisher: Profile Books, 2007

Synopsis

Unexpectedly moving and luminously wise, Tennyson's Gift is the funniest novel ever written about a Victorian Poet Laureate. In July 1864, a corner of the Isle of Wight is buzzing with literary and artistic creativity. A morose Tennyson is reciting 'Maud' to empty sofas; the photographer Julia Margaret Cameron is white-washing the roses for visual effect and; the mismatched couple, actress Ellen Terry and painter G. F. Watts are thrown into the company of the remarkable Lorenzo Fowler, the American phrenologist, and his daughter Jessie. Enter mathematician Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll), known to Jessie as the 'fiendish pedagogue', and Lynne Truss's wonderfully imaginative cocktail of Victorian seriousness and riotous farce begins to take flight.

About this title

Review:

Farce is one of the hardest literary forms to bring off: in Tennyson's Gift Lynne Truss manages the correct combination of inventiveness, planning and energy. All of her historical figures have fixed ideas that make them act against their own best interests--Tennyson is paranoid about reviews and photographs and Lewis Carroll is a snob fascinated by photography and small girls; the painter Watts agonises about past betrayals while ignoring his young actress wife Ellen Terry.

This is all the more a tour-de-force because Truss knows her material well enough to make much of the comic exaggeration come from things that were actually the case--the Tennysons spent their time on the Isle of Wight desperately hoping for a royal visit. She adds to the mix a phrenologist with an obnoxious child and a writer of anonymous letters, so that the sections of this novel continually build up comic intensity.

Most of the comedy here comes from excellent structure and timing and only in part from our preparedness to view eminent Victorians with the condescension of hindsight; this is an extravaganza with its roots in good sense and a fascination with the famous dead as they actually were. --Roz Kaveney

Review:

A comic novel of subtle distinction ... richly entertaining and at times very moving. -- The Times

An enormously entertaining novel, with terrific writing throughout. -- The Sunday Telegraph

Exuberant and funny...it all folds together into a well constructed farce, buoyant, affectionate and wise. -- Frances Spalding, Times Educational Supplement

Terrific...Tennyson's Gift is witty, surprising, oddly compassionate and hugely assured. -- The Sunday Times

The perfect summer book. No deck-chair will be complete without it. -- The Independent

About this edition

• Publisher: Profile Books
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1861977131
• ISBN 13: 9781861977137
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272