Alfred Tennyson, Locksley Hall

Steven McLean (Independent Scholar - Europe)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.07: English Writing and Culture of the Victorian Period, 1837-1901.
Vol. editors: Gillian Fenwick (University of Toronto), Grace Moore (University of Otago)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1842

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Poetry (any)

Resources

“Locksley Hall” is a poem in trochaics published in 1842. It takes the form of a monologue in which the speaker returns to the childhood home where he had been raised by an unsympathetic uncle. While the ostensible subject of the poem is the speaker's disappointment concerning a frustrated love affair, the work fuses this personal concern with wider social preoccupations.

The poem opens with the speaker returning to his childhood home, Locksley Hall. He remembers the time he spent stargazing as a child and his youthful dreams, but his thoughts soon turn to his love for his cousin Amy. He recalls his happiness after discovering that she reciprocated his feelings:

Many a morning on the moorland did we hear …

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792 words

Citation: McLean, Steven. "Locksley Hall". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 28 July 2009 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=10616, accessed 25 November 2024.]

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