Alfred, Lord Tennyson

This portraitback to top

The Pre-Raphaelite artist Millais read Tennyson's poems and produced paintings, drawings and illustrations from them. He recalled that, 'from my earliest days I have been a worshipper of his words'. This fine engraving is after his 1881 portrait, which Millais conceived as one of a sequence of eminent men. Millais was pleased with the portrait, 'without immodesty, I am sure [it] is the best of him'. Tennyson however, was less impressed, saying, 'It has neither brain nor a soul, and I have both'.

Events of 1882back to top

Current affairs

The Ashes Test cricket series is born. The series gets its name from a satirical obituary published in the English newspaper The Sporting Times, stating that English cricket had died and its cremated body was being taken back to Australia, after England, with batsmen W. G. Grace and Charles Studd, lost the first home match to Australia at the Oval.
The Married Women's Property Act is passed, securing equal property rights between married couples.

Art and science

Eadweard Muybridge, British photographer, exhibits his images of animal and human motion, captured with his 'zoopraxiscope', a motion-picture machine recreating movement by displaying individual photographs in rapid succession, at the Royal Academy and Royal Institution. His studies and inventions contributed to the development of motion pictures, with E.J. Marey and the Lumiere brothers acknowledging his impact.

International

The Zioinist movement begins, with the first wave of Jewish immigrants to Palestine, at this time part of the Ottoman empire. The Jewish people were in Diaspora, spread across the world, and Palestine, the place of Jewish origin but now also occupied by Muslims and Christians, seemed a logical place for a settlement.

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