Thank you NetGalley and Pantheon for the review copy of “The Boundless Deep” by Richard Holmes. It is greatly appreciated!

I have read some of Tennyson’s poetry–it’s kind of a requirement if you major in English literature–but I had never read a biography of the poet. Richard Holmes’ “The Boundless Deep: Young Tennyson, Science and the Crisis of Belief” is excellent. Holmes discusses Tennyson’s early home life fraught with uncertainty under the shadow of an increasingly violent alcoholic father; Tennyson’s school years where his creative genius struggled to shine from behind curtains of depression; his footloose, untethered early writing years that found Tennyson still struggling with depression and trying to find his footing as a poet; and finally his successful middle age as the Poet Laureate of Great Britain and Baron Tennyson of Freshwater, Isle of Wight.

Holmes’ study of Tennyson and his work sent me searching for two of his pieces I have never read, “In Memoriam,” written in the memory of Arthur Hallum, a dear friend, perhaps even soulmate of Tennyson (or twin spirit?) that dies too young; and “Maud: a Monodrama,” hailed by some as a brilliant portrayal of a tortured mind and reviled by others as absolute trash.

Reading Tennyson in college I never considered the mind behind the poems. Richard Holmes presents a brilliant writer that had a deep fascination with astronomy and geology; one who sought to understand the foundations of faith while he struggled with his own. Holmes gives readers a living portrait of an artist that could never have believed that his work would continue to inspire people 124 years after his death.