This second edition
The first edition of The Poems of Tennyson in this series was published in 1969 (pp. xxxiv + 1835) when the important and various manuscripts at Trinity College, Cambridge, were still under interdiction (see below). This second edition corrects errors and omissions; it assimilates the Tennyson scholarship of the last fifteen years or so; and it incorporates the Trinity MSS. The numbering of the poems in the first edition is preserved, with newly-added poems (and fragments and drafts) inserted with a following A, as 151A. New to this edition are about a dozen poems, about a thousand lines of verse, and countless variants.
Text
The text is based on the Eversley edition of Tennyson’s Works (nine volumes, Macmillan, 1907–8), which was carefully edited by Hallam Lord Tennyson. Eversley has been collated with the one-volume edition of 1894 (Macmillan), which includes Tennyson’s late revisions, and the very few differences in wording between 1894 and Eversley are noted. When the text below departs in its wording from Eversley, this too is noted. But the punctuation has sometimes been silently corrected; Eversley omits punctuation, especially at the end of a line, and in such cases the punctuation has been supplied, usually from 1894. Modern practice has been followed (in variants as well as text) in the spelling of such words as ‘though’ and ‘through’ (instead of ‘tho” and ‘thro”); in supplying the e for such words as ‘Heav’n’ and ‘th”; and in using ed/èd. But Tennyson’s use of −t (‘slipt’) has been preserved. In a review of the 1969 edition, J. Pettigrew made some shrewd criticisms of the minor modernizings (VP viii, 1970, 161–8).
The text for all the poems which were not included in Tennyson’s final edition (such poems are marked*) is specified in each case. The present is the first collected edition to include all the poems which Tennyson published, together with those since published by his son Hallam and by his grandson Sir Charles Tennyson, and those surviving in MS. Quotations from Tennyson’s notes expand his references (Ael. Lamprid. is given as Aelius Lampridius), and emend their system of reference to accord with the practice in the other notes. Not all of the notes in Eversley are reproduced, though most which still have much relevance, whether critical, historical or biographical. Eversley is the source of all statements by Tennyson, Hallam. Tennyson or Edward FitzGerald for which no specific reference is given. Those poems such as Locksley Hall which use an exceptionally long line have been set in smaller print, to avoid what is usually an ugly and awkward breaking of the lines.
When a poem is described as ‘not reprinted’, this means in authorized English editions during Tennyson’s lifetime. Without his blessing, uncollected poems were often reprinted in U.S. editions (e.g. The Poetical Works, Harper and Brothers, N. Y., 1873, kindly brought to my attention by Dr R. H. Lonsdale). In quotations (including the Letters) when the intention is unambiguous, I have given the titles of poems as in this edition (italicized), and similarly have abbreviated Tennyson to T.
Published variants
The footnotes record all differences in wording between Tennyson’s first published text of a poem and that of Eversley/1894. Readings from his errata slips are silently incorporated except when the change of wording is a genuine revision (in which case both readings are given), not a correction of a printer’s error. But no record is given of changes in wording which Tennyson introduced later than his first published text and then withdrew before Eversley/1894 – except when such variants are of especial interest (e.g. the close of The Vision of Sin, where Tennyson, in 1865 alone, added two lines). Variants in punctuation, capitalization, spelling, etc. are not recorded. The notes follow Tennyson’s own practice in speaking of Poems (published December 1832, with the title-page dated 1833) as 1832. In certain cases, an earlier reading survived inadvertently in some editions though definitively amended in others. Thus ‘blowing’ in Maud i 582 was changed to the final reading, ‘glowing’, in A Selection (1865) – but ‘blowing’ is still to be found in the 1867 reprint of Maud. Since there can be no doubt of Tennyson’s intentions, the textual point is one which may be left to the bibliographer. The formula adopted in such cases ignores the inadvertent lingerers:
glowing] 1865 Selection; blowing 1855–65.
MS variants
The Tennyson Archive, a set of thirty volumes reproducing in facsimile all such poetical MSS of Tennyson as may be permitted (including those at Trinity, at Harvard, and at Lincoln), and comprehensively indexed, is published in 1987–9 by Garland Publishing, edited by Aidan Day and the present editor. One day there will be an edition of Tennyson which records all MS variants-in twenty volumes or so. But Longman Annotated English Poets do not aim to be textually all-inclusive. Until after the 1969 edition was published, the MSS at Trinity College, Cambridge, could not be copied or quoted (in perpetuity, it was then maintained), so that a complete record of variant readings was in any case not possible then. The lifting of the restriction makes such a record possible, and it would be enormously valuable as well as enormous. Yet there is not only room for, but a need for, many different kinds of edition, though editing on any large scale is always so onerous that those of us who undertake it can only keep going by pretending to ourselves and to others that ours is the only kind of edition really worth doing. There is still something to be said for giving a selection of MS variants, and the new incorporation of the Trinity MSS has not necessitated (though it would have permitted) a change in the raison d’être, the posited readership, and the scale of such an edition as this. The editor has tried to resist the temptation to find the Trinity MSS more interesting (than, say, the good old Harvard ones) simply because they used to be under interdiction.
Since the authenticity of the MSS is beyond question, no note is made of whose hand a particular MS is written in; most are in Tennyson’s hand, and most of the rest are in those of his family. In selecting MS variants, the principles ordinarily were: that the poem for which such variants are given is important; or that the MS variant is important; or that many years elapsed between composition and publication. In the case of such poems as Ulysses or In Memoriam, it seemed right to quote all MS variants. For certain of the poems, it is specifically noted that all MS variants are given, but this has not been noted throughout. When printing poems from MS, Hallam Tennyson and Sir Charles Tennyson sometimes provided titles not deriving, apparently, from the MS. The family tradition is itself worth retaining in such cases (and there may have been MSS not now extant). In some few cases, however, where the authority of a title might be of some importance, the headnote records that the title is not in the MS cited. When it is noted that all MS variants have been given, the footnotes do not explicitly state (though they implicitly provide) the readings of MSS or trial editions when such readings agree with those of the first published editions. It is to be understood in such cases that the MS readings are those of the earliest published text (or cited trial edition) unless specifically noted otherwise.
MS 1st reading usually implies that a subsequent correction to the MS brought it into the wording of the first published text. In accordance with the practice of Hallam Tennyson and of Sir Charles Tennyson, MS material (whether poems, fragments or variants) is not reproduced literatim; spelling and capitalization have been modified, and punctuation has been amended and added. This applies to all poems which Tennyson left in MS, including those which have since been published; wherever possible such poems have been newly edited from the MSS. In a sympathetic review (Notes and Queries, September 1966) of Kenneth Allott’s Arnold in this series, J. C. Maxwell expressed doubts about such modifying of MS material. But in an edition which does not seek to be a definitive record of all MS variants, it is best to give precedence to the reader’s convenience. Tennyson used to write out whole stanzas without punctuation, but there is nothing sacred in the practice or in his occasional misspellings. Though he himself did not stumble through his draft, a modern reader probably would.
The Trinity MSS
These were almost all presented to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1924, by Hallam Tennyson, on conditions which forbade copying or quotation in perpetuity. The continued efforts of the present Lord Tennyson and of Sir Charles Tennyson, the poet’s grandson, against the interdiction, were seconded by the publication of this edition in 1969 (obliged to say on very many pages ‘Trinity MS, which may not be quoted’); and later in 1969 the College wisely chose one form of piety over another, and lifted the restriction. Particular gratitude is owed, by all who love Tennyson, to the College and to its Librarian Dr. Philip Gaskell. For not only do the Trinity MSS contain a wealth of unpublished material – poems, drafts, fragments (some of which were printed by the present editor in the TLS, 21 August 1969) – but it is only by recourse to them that Hallam Tennyson’s many errors in the poems which he published can be authoritatively corrected. J. C. Yearwood’s Catalogue of the Trinity MSS (D. Phil., Austin, 1977) is of great service. There are MSS at the University Library Cambridge, which were given with the same interdiction, likewise waived after 1969.
Tennyson permitted Hallam Tennyson to publish variants, and Hallam himself published poems from these MSS. Tennyson would probably have destroyed the MSS if he had dreaded quotation. True, Tennyson disliked variant readings, but he also said: ‘I like those old Variorum Classics – all the Notes make the Text look precious’ (Tennyson and His Friends, 1911, p. 147).
Other collections
Fortunately there were no restrictions on the Commonplace Book kept by Tennyson’s Cambridge friend, J. M. Heath, and now in the Fitzwilliam Museum. It was compiled from 1832 to 1834, and includes many of Tennyson’s early poems. For a full description, see Sir Charles Tennyson, Cornhill cliii (1936) 426–49. The Allen Notebook at Trinity College (shelf-mark R.7.50) is similar, though less important.
The notebooks and loose papers in the Houghton Library at Harvard were formerly in the possession of Sir Charles, and they comprise a collection which rivals even that at Trinity College. The Harvard MSS are described and indexed by E. F. Shannon and W. H. Bond in the Harvard Library Bulletin x (1956) 254–74. Not susceptible of description or indexing, but of great interest, are the innumerable stubs of the notebooks, which offer evidence not only of known poems but also of many poems which have not survived. (Abb. H.MS, H.Nbk, H.Lpr.)
The Tennyson Research Centre in the City Library, Lincoln, though it has valuable MS material (especially letters), is remarkable chiefly as the repository of not only Tennyson’s library but also that of his father and his brother Charles. This, and a MS of In Memoriam. There did not seem any need to differentiate two kinds of evidence showing that a particular book was in the library at Somersby: the presence now of the book itself in the Centre, and a copy of the Sale Inventory of George Clayton Tennyson’s library, 8–9 June 1831, which is also now in the Centre. See S. Shatto, ‘Tennyson’s Library’, The Book Collector xxvii (1978) 494–513.
See Tennyson in Lincoln: A Catalogue of the Collections in the Research Centre, ed. N. Campbell (vol. i, 1971; vol. ii, 1973); unfortunately much of the collection had to be sold in 1980; see R. A. Carroll, TRB iii (1980) 141–6; S. Shatto, VP xviii (1980) 309–12; and R. L. Collins, TRB iv (1984) 134.
Publication
T. J. Wise’s Bibliography of the Writings of Tennyson (1908) is indispensable, but it is inaccurate and is corrupted by his forgeries. Until there exists a complete list of the myriad editions, no textual apparatus can hope to be impeccable.
The headnotes, in citing the first publication of a poem or volume, make no attempt to list all Tennyson’s privately printed editions. ‘Publication’ is taken in its simplest sense: ‘issued for sale to the public’. But full details are given whenever a privately printed edition had real importance (e.g. The Window, II 697).
‘In 1842 [before publishing Poems, 1842] he had eight of the blank verse poems printed for his private use, because he always liked to see his poems in print some months and sometimes some years before publication, “for”, as he said, “poetry looks better, more convincing, in print”. This little volume was entitled Morte d’Arthur; Dora, and other Idyls’ (Mem. i 189–90n). These private volumes contain important textual evidence. Though Tennyson certainly used them as proofs, they had for him a function which goes beyond proof-correcting, and it therefore seemed best to refer to them as trial editions. A bibliographer of Tennyson may have to differentiate trial editions from proofs; for this edition no such differentiation seemed necessary. Hallam Tennyson speaks of ‘the first unpublished edition’ which included Locksley Hall (Mem. i 195), and the textual notes below likewise treat all such trial editions as essentially prepublication MS material, and so give only selected variants from them.
Hallam Tennyson had privately printed Materials for a Life of A.T., a draft of his Tennyson: A Memoir (1897). The headnotes do not specify the first printing in Materials of poems and fragments which were first published in the Memoir.
The order of the poems
As is standard for this series, the poems are printed in their chronological order of composition. This removes many anomalies but it also creates some. Reviewing Kenneth Allott’s Arnold in Victorian Studies ix (1966) 215–17, A. Dwight Culler conceded that there is no ideal order in which to print the poems, and he specified two problems. First, ‘we simply do not know very precisely when many of Arnold’s poems were written’. Second, Arnold seems to have kept a good many poems going simultaneously’. Yet Professor Culler on the whole approved: ‘Having said all this, I am nonetheless glad that Professor Allott decided upon this arrangement; for, after all, we have the other in the Tinker and Lowry edition.’
All these considerations apply to Tennyson. The obstacles to a chronological ordering are that for many poems no precise date of composition exists (and this is particularly true of the extraordinarily fertile years till 1834), and that Tennyson kept many poems going simultaneously, often working on a poem for decades. Yet we do have the other arrangement, roughly by the original volumes, in other easily available editions – Macmillan’s, or Oxford Standard Authors. Despite the anomalies, the advantages of a chronological ordering, even a tentative one, are considerable. With a poet whose active career was so long, no reader can avoid pondering the development of his art. For a discussion of advantages, disadvantages, and anomalies, see Ian Jack: ‘A Choice of Orders: The Arrangement of “The Poetical Works” ‘, in Textual Studies and Their Meaning for Literary Criticism, ed. J. J. McGann (1985).
An attempt is made to mitigate the anomalies by inserting cross-references at points where the ordering might mislead. The major problem has been the poems which comprise a linked series written over several years. In Memoriam was begun in 1833, and published in 1850; it is printed under 1850, with a note under 1833. The Epic could not be separated from Morte d’Arthur which it introduces, and this meant either placing Morte d’Arthur misleadingly under 1837, or The Epic misleadingly under 1833. The latter seemed preferable, with a note under 1837. Some other cases, where it seemed that linked poems did not have to be printed together (so violating chronology), could invoke the precedent set by Hallam Tennyson himself. In Tennyson and His Friends (pp. 75–7), he saw nothing objectionable in printing To Edward FitzGerald without Tiresias, and To Professor Jebb, etc., without the poems to which they act as introductions. In all such cases, chronological ordering is at odds with keeping the poems together. Which of the two has been allowed to win is a matter of each particular case. ‘How grave is the violation of chronology?’ has had to contend with ‘How grave is it to divorce these two linked poems?’
There is little precise evidence for dating the early poems, and so the poems in the three volumes of 1827, 1830 and 1832 have been kept in the sequence in which they appeared in their respective volumes. The chronological ordering therefore begins with the few poems which antedate 1827; then come the poems of 1827 in the order in which they were originally printed; then a few intermediate poems; then the poems of 1830; again a few intermediate poems; and then the poems of 1832. After which (with No. 183) all poems are given in a suggested chronological order (with subsequent volumes therefore broken up). In the absence of evidence it would have been merely bluff to reorder the poems in 1827, 1830 and 1832; what needs to be borne in mind is that the chronological ordering from 1824 to 1833 is decidedly more approximate than thereafter. Throughout, though, there are unavoidably tentative datings. The contents of volumes later than 1832 are listed in Appendix D (III 648), so that such groupings by Tennyson may be reconstituted by the reader.
Since Tennyson would have wished it, Crossing the Bar has been placed at the end of the main chronology, with a cross-reference given in sequence.
Idylls of the King were written over a large span of years, and yet clearly needed to be printed as one sequence; they are therefore printed together at the end of the volume (Nos. 463–76), followed by Songs from the Plays (No. 477), also out of the main sequence, and by four Appendices containing respectively Alternative Drafts; Fragments, Trivia &c; Doubtful Poems; and Contents of Volumes.
The plays
Though it includes his early play, The Devil and the Lady, this edition omits the plays which Tennyson published from 1875. The decision was based only in part on a judgement of their quality; the fact that they are readily available not only in nineteenth-century but also in modern editions made it reasonable to omit them here. Tennyson himself authorized collected editions which omitted the plays, retaining only – as in the present case – the songs from the plays.
Parallel passages
The footnotes cite many parallel passages. As in any annotated edition these illustrate a range of possible likenesses. At one end is conscious allusion to another poet; then unconscious reminiscence; then phrasing which is only an analogue and not a source. Some of the instances cited here are probably analogues, not sources, but they are cited because Tennyson’s phrasing can be illuminated by the comparison. Though eighteenth-century diction has been well studied, nineteenth-century late romantic diction has remained relatively unexplored. Parallel passages from, say, Keats and Shelley point not always to a source but to a common fund of poetic materials. What precisely Tennyson made of such materials may best be seen when we invoke – for comparison and contrast – his predecessors. Certainly Tennyson himself disliked such source-hunters as John Churton Collins:
There is, I fear, a prosaic set growing up among us, editors of booklets, book-worms, index-hunters, or men of great memories and no imagination, who impute themselves to the poet, and so believe that he, too, has no imagination, but is for ever poking his nose between the pages of some old volume to see what he can appropriate. They will not allow one to say “Ring the bell” without finding that we have taken it from Sir P. Sidney, or even to use such a simple expression as the ocean “roars”, without finding out the precise verse in Homer or
Horace from which we have plagiarised it (fact). (Eversley iv 239–40) But he was prepared nevertheless to quote such parallels himself. His note at Eversley i 334 says: ‘Many of the parallelisms here given are accidental. The same idea must often occur independently to two men looking on the same aspects of Nature.’ Accidental parallels may, then, have their own interest, even if the major interest still belongs to what is not accidental but a source.
Translations of the classics are from the Loeb editions whenever possible. As to acknowledging the work of previous scholars on this and similar matters, the principle has been to provide specific acknowledgements when a scholarly point was made for the first time during the last fifty years or so. It did not seem necessary to acknowledge by name the earlier discoverers, except when a particular interest or authority attaches to them. K. H. Beetz has edited Tennyson: A Bibliography, 1827–1982 (1984).
Poems by Two Brothers (1827)
The only major problem of attribution concerns Poems by Two Brothers, by Tennyson and his brother Charles, with a few poems by their brother Frederick. It was published in April 1827 (the persistent statement that it was published late in 1826 is certainly an error, pace Hallam Tennyson, who wrote to J. E. Wetherell, 15 Oct. 1891: ‘The publishers dated the book with the date of the year following the publication’ (Letters iii), it being instead true that ‘My father was 17 … when the book was published’). Tennyson later said to Sir James Knowles: ‘There were twenty-six misprints, but the publisher would not make a longer list of errata’ than the seven which appear (Nineteenth Century xxxiii (1893) 181). The epigraph was Haec nos novimus esse nihil (Martial, XIII ii 8: nos haec … ‘We know these efforts of ours are nothing worth’). The poems were prefaced by an Advertisement dated March 1827:
The following Poems were written from the ages of fifteen to eighteen, not conjointly, but individually; which may account for their difference of style and matter. To light upon any novel combination of images, or to open any vein of sparkling thought untouched before, were no easy task: indeed the remark itself is as old as the truth is clear; and, no doubt, if submitted to the microscopic eye of periodical Criticism, a long list of inaccuracies and imitations would result from the investigation. But so it is: we have passed the Rubicon, and we leave the rest to fate; though its edict may create a fruitless regret that we ever emerged from “the shade,” and courted notoriety.
Paul Turner, Tennyson (1976), p. 40, notes that this Advertisement ‘is modelled on the Preface to Byron’s first volume, Hours of Idleness (1807), even down to the statement “we have passed the Rubicon”.’ It is to be noted that many of Tennyson’s best youthful poems ‘were omitted from the Poems by Two Brothers, being thought too much out of the common for the public taste’ (Mem. i 23).
There was a move to reissue the volume in 1865; Tennyson’s brother Charles wrote to him about this, 6 Feb. (Mat. i 39n; Letters ii 391); Tennyson bought this off. William Allingham lent Tennyson a copy of T. Bayne’s article on Charles and 1827 (Fraser’s Magazine, Dec. 1881); Allingham records T. as saying, 13 Jan. 1882: ‘I myself at that time had done far better things than any contained in that volume – but there were parts of would-be Epics 5000 lines long – all which thank God, and the Muses, are burnt’ (Letters iii).
In 1893 Hallam Tennyson authorized a reprint of 1827, and prefaced it by saying:
It is requested that none of the poems in this volume said to be by my father and consequently signed A.T., be included in any future edition of his Works, as my uncle, Frederick Tennyson, cannot be certain of the authorship of every poem, and as the hand-writing of the manuscript is known not to be a sure guide.
The Additional Poems at the end form part of the original manuscript of 1827, and were omitted for some forgotten reason.
My father writes, “The Preface states ‘written from 15 to 18.’ I was between 15 and 17, Charles between 15 and 18.”
The following is from Frederick Tennyson, and explains itself: “I return you the Poems, with which I have been greatly interested, as I did not expect to find them so good as they really are. The initials are right as appended to my four poems, but I cannot be sure of the others.”
(The correspondence with Frederick is now at Yale.) Despite this Preface, Hallam Tennyson permitted W. J. Rolfe to include Tennyson’s poems of 1827 in his edition of 1898; for this edition Hallam modified the attributions in some cases (the headnotes below indicate this where it is of importance).
Hallam Tennyson saw to the appending of initials (A.T., C.T. and F.T.) in 1893, some with queries. A letter from Robert Bowes to Hallam, 1 March 1893 (now at Lincoln), makes it clear that the main evidence was the handwriting of the MS of 1827 (watermarked 1823), despite the doubts expressed in the Preface. In addition to the memory of the aged Frederick, further evidence for the attributions exists in three surviving copies of 1827.
Professor W. D. Paden studied two of these copies in an article in The Library xix (1964) 147–61, and the present edition is much indebted to him. First: the Haddelsey copy, with attributions by Tennyson, now in the Brotherton Collection at Leeds: ‘This copy was presented by Lord Tennyson to Mr Haddelsey the family Solicitor with the poems marked by him showing that Three Brothers were concerned in the book.’ Second: Charles’s own copy in which he marked attributions (formerly in the possession of Mr Paden). The divergences between these three sources (1893, the Haddelsey copy, Charles’s copy) are sufficient to suggest that the sources have independent authority, and this lends great weight to the fact that in most cases the attributions are identical. Mr Paden argued that the agreement of both the Haddelsey and Charles’s copy should be considered to outweigh a dissenting attribution in 1893 (see Appendix C, Doubtful Poems, III 641). For full details, his article must be studied. Subsequent to it, a third copy of 1827 with attributions has turned up. This was given by Tennyson’s Aunt Russell to a Mrs Robinson in 1827, and it includes Mrs Russell’s attributions – only one of which (Frederick’s The Oak of the North) is followed by a query. This, the Russell copy, now belongs to Mr Chilton Thomson, who has kindly allowed the use of it. As with the Haddelsey and Charles’s copy, the divergences in the Russell copy are sufficient to suggest that it has independent authority, and this again lends important weight to the fact that most of its attributions concur with the three other sources.
When a headnote below quotes solely the 1893 attribution, it is to be understood that 1893 is supported by all three of the marked copies of 1827. Whenever these four authorities do not agree, the headnote to a poem says so.
Addendum. For further parallel passages, see A. Burnett, ‘Echoes and Parallels in Tennyson’s Poetry’, Notes and Queries (March 1987).