Enoch Arden, &c

'Enoch Arden' is a narrative poem published by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, during his tenure as England's poet laureate. The story on which it was based was provided to Tennyson by Thomas Woolner. The hero of the poem, fisherman turned merchant sailor Enoch Arden, leaves his wife Annie and three children to go to sea with his old captain, who offers him work after he had lost his job due to an accident; in a manner that reflects the hero's masculine view of personal toil and hardship to support his family, Enoch Arden left his family to better serve them as a husband and father. However, during his voyage, Enoch Arden is shipwrecked on a desert island with two companions; both eventually die, leaving Arden alone there.