This text covers the most significant areas of recent work on Tennyson, linking feminist and gender studies with deconstructive, psychoanalytic and linguistic attention. The introduction discusses ways in which orthodox critical approaches have dominated readings of Tennyson’s poetry and provides a critical overview of his work. It also provides a guide to the varied ways in which these recent debates have shaped and are shaping themselves, with a final discussion of the future directions which Tennyson criticism is likely to take. The essays in the book reflect a range of modes of critical inquiry compelling in themselves.