Tennyson's gift

the long version

It is July 1864 and the Isle of Wight is buzzing with eccentric creative types. Tennyson recites poetry to furniture while his invalid wife hides bad reviews in teapots and buries them in the garden with a teaspoon. Also at Freshwater Bay are the creepy Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) and Julia Margaret Cameron, a photographer determined to capture an image of the bard in a suitably heroic pose. Into this cauldron of unrequited love and egotism step the acclaimed painter G.F. Watts and his unlikely sixteen-year-old acress wife Ellen Terry; also the American father-and-daughter team of phrenologists, Lorenzo and Jessie Fowler.