Genre:

Regular Feature, Biography

Subjects:

Spiritualism, Heterodoxy, Boundary Formation

    In reflecting on the recently deceased laureate, insists that 'no one can read "In Memoriam" without recognising that the poet was conscious of spirit-communion which, if it had been suspected in a less eminent man, would have led to his ostracism as a lunatic or a spiritualist'. In fact, Alfred Tennyson 'wrote many of the best and truest things he ever published under the direct influence of higher intelligences, of whose presence he was distinctly conscious', and he 'was, to use the technical term, a clairaudient and inspirational medium'. (446)