Other literary forms
In addition to his poetry, Arthur Henry Hallam (HAL-uhm) also wrote essays. Expository prose was probably more congenial to him than verse, and his most promising efforts were in that area.
Achievements
Arthur Henry Hallam died at the age of twenty-two without having written any major poetry, yet he left behind unmistakable evidence of literary ability that, had he lived, might well have developed into lasting eminence (though probably in criticism rather than in poetry). While his verse displayed promise, none of his poems proved to be immortal; and his work does not appear in standard literary anthologies. For all its tantalizing possibility, Hallam’s surviving literary output has interest chiefly as a revelation of the mind and personality valued by Alfred, Lord Tennyson above all others. Besides their relevance to Tennyson, however, Hallam’s apprentice verses are still a minor literary achievement in their own right.
Bibliography
Brown, John. Arthur H. Hallam. Philadelphia: R. West, 1978. A basic biography dealing with the short life and works of Hallam.
Chandler, James. “Hallam, Tennyson, and the Poetry of Sensation: Aestheticist Allegories of a Counter-Public Sphere.” Studies in Romanticism 33, no. 4 (Winter, 1994): 527. An examination of late Romantic aestheticism in the works of Hallam and Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
Clausen, Christopher. “Arthur Henry Hallam and the Victorian Promise.” Sewanee Review 101, no. 3 (Summer, 1993): 375. A discussion of the differences between Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s In Memoriam and William Gladstone’s essay “Arthur Henry Hallam.”
Hallam, Arthur Henry. The Letters of Arthur Henry Hallam. Edited by Jack Kolb. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1981. This selection of Hallam’s voluminous correspondence includes many responses from personages such as Alfred, Lord Tennyson, his sister Emily, William Gladstone, and Richard Monckton Milnes. Kolb’s introduction argues for the importance of the correspondence as Hallam’s means “to keep pure and limpid,” in Hallam’s own words, “the source of all generous emotions.”
_______. The Poems of Arthur Henry Hallam. Edited by Richard Le Gallienne. London: Elkin Mathews & John Lane, 1893. Contains a selection of poems, as well as the essay “On Some of the Characteristics of Modern Poetry, and on the Lyrical Poems of Alfred Tennyson.” Le Gallienne’s introduction provides a biographical sketch that explores the basis of Hallam’s aesthetic writings. The poetry remains largely unanalyzed.
_______. The Writings of Arthur Hallam. Edited by T. H. Vail Motter. London: Oxford University Press, 1943. Collects Hallam’s poems, essays, reviews, and translations, as well as juvenilia, an evaluation of the critical writings, and a note on Hallam’s voluminous correspondence. Also contains a useful chronology of Hallam’s life. Motter explains in his preface that the collection attempts to correct the perception of Hallam as a “mere shadow” of Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
Kolb, Jack. “Hallam, Tennyson, Homosexuality, and the Critics.” Philological Quarterly 79, no. 3 (Summer, 2000): 365-396. Kolb, the editor of Hallam’s letters, examines how the critics have viewed the relationship between Hallam and Alfred, Lord Tennyson, as portrayed in Tennyson’s In Memoriam over the years, and what it shows about the critics’ biases.
Mansell, Darrel. “Displacing Hallam’s Tomb in Tennyson’s ’In Memoriam.’” Victorian Poetry 36, no. 1 (Spring, 1998): 97-112. Mansell argues that Tennyson’s poem “In Memoriam A. H. H.” is in error concerning some facts about Hallam’s death.
Martin, Robert Bernard. Tennyson: The Unquiet Heart. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1983. This authoritative and brilliant biography of Alfred, Lord Tennyson is equally excellent on his friendship with Hallam. While hardly a chapter fails to mention Hallam, three chapters are devoted to him and his influence on Tennyson. These focus on student life at Cambridge, Hallam’s influence on Tennyson’s publications, and Hallam’s death.
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