'Sure-handed and generously conceived to address a contemporary student's difficulties with In Memoriam and turn them into opportunities. Users of this guide will especially thank Barton for the model essays she has crafted on four strikingly different threads that traverse the poem: language, touch, economics, and ritual cycle.' Professor Herbert Tucker, University of Virginia AUTHOR-APPROVED Reading Guides to Long Poems Series Editors: Isobel Armstrong & Sally Bushell The series enables readers to re-engage with the long poem as a vital form. Volumes provide generous extracts, or in some cases complete poems, from significant works combined with a reading guide and teaching tips from enthusiastic lecturers who have taught the poem. Tennyson's In Memoriam: A Reading Guide Anna Barton Introduces Tennyson's famous elegy to first-time readers, students and teachers of the poem In Memoriam is one of the most famous and influential poems of the nineteenth century. Composed over nearly three decades and spanning over one hundred sections, it is also one of the longest elegies in the English language. It is at once a deeply personal description of grief and a wide-ranging discussion of its age. This guide takes readers through Tennyson's elegy, providing: * The full text of the poem * Information about its cultural, historical and literary contexts * Four different reading strategies for approaching the text * Suggested seminar activities, assessments and module outlines for teachers and lecturers Anna Barton is currently a lecturer in nineteenth-century literature at the University of Sheffield. Her monograph, Tennyson's Name: Identity and Responsibility in the Poetry of Alfred Lord Tennyson, was published by Ashgate in 2008.