Hello. From January next year, Seamus Perry and Mark Ford will be returning with a new 12-part series of LRB Close Readings podcasts, taking a fresh look at 19th and 20th century literature through the lens of long poems and short stories. The long and short will consider 12 writers, from Tennyson and Henry James to Elizabeth Bowen and Alice Oswald, with a new

episode appearing each month. If you subscribe to the full program, as well as the podcast series,

you'll get copies of all the books discussed in the 12 episodes and access to online seminars

throughout the year. You can find out more and subscribe at the link below or in the shop section

of the LRB website or go to

lrb.me forward slash long short that's one word long short where you'll also find details of

audio only options in the meantime here's sample from their first episode on Tennyson's

maud our first topic is a long poem.

One of the very great long poems of the 19th century,

a poem by Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson, called Maud,

which was published in 1855.

So Mark, tell us a little bit about the origins of Maud.

Maud was the first long poem that Tennyson composed and published after his In Memoriam,

which was the poem that made him spectacularly famous, actually not only in England, but all around the world.

In Memoriam was a series of over 130 kind of lyrics mourning the loss of his friend Arthur

Hallam. And it was so popular that he read it to Queen Victoria. And famously, it was a poem

that comforted people who had been bereaved. And it elevated Tennyson from a poet who had been well reviewed to a kind of

national treasure. And that year he became the poet laureate. He also married Emily Selwood,

whom he'd been sort of semi-corting, I suppose, for 14 years, though for a decade he hadn't courted

her at all. So she'd been hanging on. And he'd been living a rather vagrant life,

a sort of semi-ohemian life, you could say, stalking around London in his cloak and fedora,

sleeping on friends' couches, and composing poetry often in his head as he walked around. And suddenly

...