Mark Ford and Seamus Perry start their series, The Long and Short, with Tennyson’s ‘Maud’, a weird and disturbing poem about obsession that Tennyson himself was obsessed by. He would recite it in full at the drop of a hat, sometimes more than once, to friends and foes alike – even though it received notoriously bad reviews when it was published. This episode considers why the poem meant so much to him, and what it tells us about the Victorian age. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full, and all our other Close Readings series, sign up: Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠https://lrb.me/tlasapple⁠ In other podcast apps: ⁠https://lrb.me/tlassignuppod⁠ Read more on Tennyson in the LRB: Seamus Perry: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v33/n02/seamus-perry/are-we-there-yet Danny Karlin: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v09/n20/danny-karlin/tennyson-s-text

Seamus Perry and Mark Ford introduce their series on long poems and short stories from the 19th and 20th centuries, and talk about some of the ideas which will underpin their twelve episodes. The authors discussed in the series will be: Alfred Tennyson, Henry James, D.H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, James Joyce, Elizabeth Bowen, Nella Larson, Langston Hughes, Walt Whitman, Allen Ginsberg, Ted Hughes and Alice Oswald.