The Princess

Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson, Baron, 1809-1892Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.5

Word count: 146K words
Chapters: 15

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The Princess by Baron Alfred Tennyson TennysonAuthor: Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson, Baron, 1809-1892,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Jan 1, 1997

Editor's review

Tennyson's The Princess is a long poem that takes up women's education, gender roles and the choice of a partner—remarkably forward-looking for its Victorian context. It offers both the sweep of narrative verse and Tennyson's signature music and lyricism, so readers can follow the story while sensing the poet's meditation on the clash between ideals and reality. The work is often read within the nineteenth-century debate over women's education, and its value lies not only in literary terms but in the window it opens onto shifting ideas of the age. As you read, watch the disagreements among the characters over how women should be educated, and how the narrator balances serious questions with humor and irony. For readers who love poetry and want to see Victorian literature engage with social issues, this is a work worth close attention.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers who enjoy Victorian poetry and narrative verse
Readers interested in literary treatments of women's education and gender
Students studying Tennyson's work and its relation to the ideas of his time
Literature lovers willing to experience rhyme and irony through a long poem

Not a good fit for

Readers who want tight plotting in fiction and have little patience for poetry
Beginners entirely unwilling to engage with nineteenth-century English verse
Readers who want conclusions about gender issues without reading the text closely

Reading tips

Start with the background of the nineteenth-century British debate on women's education before entering the poem.
Read passages aloud and note shifts in Tennyson's rhythm and tone to catch the irony.
Mark the different characters' views on education and marriage and compare them briefly.
After finishing, return to the preface or introduction and see how the poet handles serious questions with humor.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

What issues does The Princess mainly discuss?

The work centers on women's education, gender roles and the choice of a marriage partner, presenting disagreements among characters over whether women should receive higher education and how an ideal relationship between the sexes should be built. It is not a manifesto of a single position but lets multiple voices coexist through narrative and irony, so readers must judge the poet's attitude from context.

Is this a novel or a poem?

It is a narrative poem that tells a story in verse, so the reading experience differs from a novel. The plot advances through stanzas and character monologues, and the language is metrical and lyrical. If you are used to novels, begin by reading it as a narrative in sections and gradually adjust to the rhythm of poetry.

Do I need to know Tennyson first?

You need not study Tennyson systematically, but it helps to know that he lived in the Victorian era and often explored the tension between the spirit of the age and personal feeling. The gender questions in the work relate to the social debates of the time, and a short background introduction will reduce obstacles to understanding.

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About the author

Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson, Baron, 1809-1892 Author

Alfred Tennyson, Baron Tennyson (1809-1892), was a British poet who succeeded Wordsworth as Poet Laureate in 1850. His representative works include Idylls of the King, Maud, and Other Poems, and Enoch Arden. This library holds 17 of his works, commonly classified under inspirational growth. Drawing frequently on classical and medieval legend, his poetry is finely crafted and highly musical, combining Romantic sentiment with a Victorian concern for morality, faith and the meaning of life; Idylls of the King uses the Arthurian legends to explore the conflict between duty and desire. Available public information is limited, and no further biographical details are provided.