INTERNATIONAL INTERDISCIPLINARY CONFERENCE

TENNYSON 2026: ECOLOGY, LANDSCAPE, ENVIRONMENT

LINCOLN, UK, 14-17TH JULY 2026

**Deadline for Abstracts (300 w max.) and Bio (150 w max.)**

31 JANUARY 2026

Address inquiries and submit proposals as attachments to Tennyson2026@bishopg.ac.uk

Sponsored by the Tennyson Society and Bishop Grosseteste University, this interdisciplinary conference will convene in Lincolnshire, the landscape into which Tennyson was born (see https://tennysonsociety.com/tennyson-2026-conference/.)

CALL FOR PAPERS

Tennyson’s poetry was central in forming Victorian responses to the natural world and to scientific advances which underpin today’s emerging fields of environmental studies and plant humanities, as well as interdisciplinary studies of literature and science, literary geographies, literature and the arts, and literature and print culture. His evocative idyllic settings inspired painters from the Pre-Raphaelites to Edward Lear, while his struggles with evolutionary theory engaged with a different vision of ‘Nature, red in tooth and claw’. His poetic sonorities inspired new soundscapes in music and even later film adaptations.  This will be a timely opportunity to explore the varied legacies left to us by the Victorians and their Poet Laureate, and to assess their relevance to the global climate and social justice crises of today.

Our conference welcomes proposals that range widely, from geology to garden design, from the celebration of landscape to warfare and the destruction of landscape, from the minutiae of the ‘Flower in the Crannied Wall’ to the ‘Vastness’ of Space, from the threat of industrialisation and global capitalism to the promise of a utopian future, from imperial land-grabbing to the preservation of local identities and dialects.

Possible topics (among others):

Science and Evolution                                                Tennyson and “Nature Poets”

Neo-Victorian Afterlives                                             Tennyson and the Arts, Sculpture, Architecture

Industrialization, Pollution, Extractive Capitalism         Tennyson and Ruskin, Morris, Meredith, Hardy

Landscape and Gender, Sexuality                               Tennyson, Music, and Soundscapes

Sites of Devastation, War, and Warfare                       Tennyson & L.E.L., E. Brontë, EBB, C. Rossetti

Environment and Psychology                                     Tennyson’s Personal and Literary Networks

Dialect, Regionalism, and the Sense of Place               Tennyson and Horticulture, Gardens, Farming

Poetry’s Periodical and Print Ecologies                        Tennyson and the Sea

Walking, Walking Tours, and Poetry                            Tennyson, Imperialism, and Foreign Lands

The Lives of Flora and/or Fauna                                  Cemeteries, Waste, Dust

Ecologies, Landscapes, and Race                                 Poetry and the Cosmos

Class Hierarchies, Law, and Land Inheritance               Plant Humanities

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Dinah Birch, “Tennyson and Ruskin: Versions of the Modern”; Clare Pettitt, “Tennyson's Garden: Idylls of the King and the Technologization of Nature”; Lindsay Wells, “Tennyson, Horticulture, and the Plant Humanities”

Sponsors’ support has enabled a very affordable conference rate, with affordable housing as well.