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Poems (Tennyson, 1842)


Poems, by Alfred Tennyson, was a two-volume 1842 collection in which new poems and reworked older ones were printed in separate volumes. It includes some of Tennyson's finest and best-loved poems, such as Mariana, The Lady of Shalott, The Palace of Art, The Lotos Eaters, Ulysses, Locksley Hall, The Two Voices, Sir Galahad, and Break, Break, Break. It helped to establish his reputation as one of the greatest poets of his time.

The first volume of the book consists of poems taken from his 1830 Poems, Chiefly Lyrical and 1832 (the imprint reads 1833) Poems, and the second consists of new work. Tennyson had been severely stung by the more hostile reviews of the 1832 book, which had found some of his poems silly, affected and obscure. He meant to reinstate himself in critical esteem, and to this end he very heavily revised the best of his earlier work, often following the reviewers’ detailed criticisms. This in many cases, such as Œnone and The Lady of Shalott, resulted in greatly improved versions. In the new poems contained in the second volume he also took to heart the general tenor of the advice his critics had given. By 1840 the work of revision and composition was complete, or virtually so. The increasing danger of his earlier poems being pirated in their unrevised forms in America impelled him to forestall that threat by finding a publisher, and in March 1842, partly at his friend Edward FitzGerald's insistence, a contract was signed with Edward Moxon.

A first edition of 800 copies was published by Moxon on 14 May, of which 500 copies had been sold by September. An edition was published in Boston the same year by the firm of W. D. Ticknor, who sent Tennyson one of the first copyright payments made by any American publisher to a British writer. Home sales were from the start highly encouraging, and his two-thirds profit agreement with Moxon earned Tennyson more than £600 during the first four years, alleviating his serious financial difficulties. As succeeding editions came out Tennyson began to add more poems, such as Come Not When I Am Dead and The Eagle. The 10th edition, in 1857, was illustrated by Rossetti, Millais, Holman Hunt and others, and by 1868 a 19th edition had appeared.


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