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Which poems did Alfred, Lord Tennyson write after Arthur Henry Hallam died?
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Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Portrait of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, lithograph published in The Modern Portrait Gallery, 1890.
Following the sudden death of his close friend Arthur Henry Hallam in 1833, Alfred, Lord Tennyson composed a vast body of work as he navigated his grief and the intellectual challenges of the Victorian era.123
The most significant work directly inspired by Hallamâs death is In Memoriam, a collection of 131 elegiac sections written between 1833 and 1850. During this same period of mourning, Tennyson also produced several other notable poems, including:12
- "The Two Voices" (originally titled "Thoughts of a Suicide")23
- "Ulysses"3
- "St. Simeon Stylites"3
- "Morte dâArthur" (first draft)23
- Lyrics that were later incorporated into the monodrama Maud3
In the years following his initial period of mourning, Tennyson continued to write extensively, publishing major works such as The Princess (1847), the Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington (1852), and the epic Idylls of the King (1859), among many others throughout his long career.2