Alfred Tennyson

Life and writing

Alfred Tennyson lived from 1809 to 1892. The Academy of American Poets records his friendship with Arthur Henry Hallam, Hallam’s death in 1833 and the relationship of In Memoriam to that loss. It also records the poem’s 1850 publication and Tennyson’s appointment as poet laureate that year. These facts provide a referenced setting for reading the elegy without making every section a diary entry or assigning composition dates to the archive’s excerpts. Existing author identities and source metadata remain unchanged.

The loved-and-lost lines occur at the end of section XXVII in the checked Edward Moxon edition of 1850, following a statement about what the speaker feels in sorrow. The honest-doubt passage appears in section XCIV there, within an account of questioning, conduct and a developing faith. Bartlett’s archive citation instead gives XCVI. Both selected passages match the linked text under limited punctuation, case and spacing comparison, while this real numbering difference is retained. The reference directs readers to a specific edition rather than quietly rewriting the anthology’s location or claiming every edition uses the same sequence.

Reading this voice

Read XXVII and XCIV in the linked 1850 text, then follow adjacent sections to hear how the elegy moves between assertions and questions. Bartlett’s XCVI location for honest doubt is preserved alongside this edition’s XCIV. The 343 associated entries include 287 historical anthology records and 56 contributor-supplied records whose broader attribution remains independently unverified. Publication and lifetime years are context, not dates of every excerpt’s composition.

Subjects to explore

Words to begin with

• 'T is better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all.
• There lives more faith in honest doubt, Believe me, than in half the creeds.