Even Alfred, Lord Tennyson was young once. You wouldn’t know it from the photos, thanks to which he is “enshrined in the national memory” as a “Victorian bard,” face swallowed by “a tremendous beard,” ever after “doomed to look ancient, patriarchal, and prophetic.” Richard Holmes’s purpose in his new study of Tennyson’s formative years, therefore, is to rediscover Tennyson before the beard.