The approach of the centenary of Tennyson's death spurred critical activity in the early 1990s, resulting in the appearance of several new major biographical and critical studies. Two helpful, if limited, books deserve brief mention. The first, A Tennyson Chronology (1990), is F. B. Pinion's compilation of a chronological listing of events in the poet's life. Issued as one of a series of “Chronologies” by the publishers at Macmillan, Pinion's guidebook is useful for scholars wishing to check facts, but offers little interpretation about the significance of events that shaped Tennyson's art. The second, Roger Simpson's Camelot Regained (1990), is less about Tennyson's poetry than about the Arthurian background that informs many of his works, including Idylls of the King. Simpson shows that, far from being the initiator of Arthurian studies in England, Tennyson was simply following the lead of other nineteenth-century writers who had resurrected Arthurian tales. Nevertheless, Simpson argues, much of the Arthurian background in Tennyson's work is really the invention of the poet rather than a borrowing from medieval sources.

During the final decade of the century, Tennyson became a figure of significant interest to feminist critics. Two essays on Tennyson are included in Regina Barreca's Sex and Death in Victorian Literature (1990). In the first, Gerhard Joseph examines the image of the sword in Tennyson's poetry, demonstrating how this object carries dual significance, serving at once as a symbol of sexual power and of death.