Tennyson’s Poetic Faith

Richard Holmes’s new biography, The Boundless Deep, depicts how Alfred Lord Tennyson absorbed the scientific discoveries of his era, paying special attention to revelations from geology and astronomy about “deep time” and “deep space.” These revelations shook Victorian society since they undermined the biblicist account of creation’s age. Tennyson also assimilated early theories of evolution, slightly prior to Darwin’s discoveries, and incorporated them into his poetry. In his greatest work, In Memoriam, these discomfiting notions merge with Tennyson’s personal grief over the death of his best friend, Arthur Henry Hallam, to create an atmosphere of doubt and despair that at times threatens to overwhelm. The poet presses through this bleak milieu, however, and finds his way back to faith.