5The Letterê of Arthur Henry Mai lam

872 Pages·2006·35.3 MB·English

Edited by Jack Kolb
<5The Letterê of
Arthur Henry Mai lam
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THE LETTERS OF
ARTHUR HENRY HALLAM
Edited by Jack Kolb
Hallam is best remembered as the subject of what
is, certainly, the most personal, and one of the
most moving, elegies in English literature, Alfred
Lord Tennyson's In Memoriam—a poem that com­
memorates and celebrates the estimable qualities of
a gifted young man who died prematurely in 1833,
at age twenty-two, while traveling with his father
in Europe, and whose personality and character,
ironically enough, were to be persistently and in­
creasingly obscured and distorted in the century
following his death by the peculiar circumstances
in which his literary "remains" were first pub­
lished, and by the injudicious expurgations made
by Hallam Tennyson in the account of the Hallam-
Tennyson relationship in the memoir he wrote of
his father.
In this scholarly edition of all known surviving
letters and fragments by and to Hallam, we are able
to see for the first time, and to see whole and plain,
the golden boy who occupied so important a place
both in the affection and admiration of his friends
and at the center of the famous coterie of "Cam­
bridge Apostles"—a group that, to be sure, was in
part a mutual admiration society, but one that also
epitomized the literary, intellectual, and political
interests and aspirations of the generation that,
about 1830, was beginning to come into its own.
Hallam, the son of the eminent historian Henry
Hallam, was born in 1811, and was the author of a
volume of creditable poetry and of numerous essays
and reviews. His letters chronicle his schooling at
Eton and Cambridge, a romantic season spent in
Italy, a spiritual crisis, the course of his friendship
with Tennyson, his engagement to Emily Tenny­
son, his apprenticeship in a law office, and a
burgeoning career as a journalist. They provide, in
addition, revealing and important information,
otherwise unobtainable, on the early lives and
opinions of Hallam's friends, many of whom rose to
positions of considerable prominence and influence
(Continued on back flap)

The Letters of Arthur Henry Hallam

6The LetteiS of
Arthur Henry H ai la m
EDITED BY JACK KOLB
OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS : COLUMBUS
Copyright © 1981 by the Ohio State University Press
All Rights Reserved.
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
Hallam, Arthur Henry, 1811-1833.
The letters of Arthur Henry Hallam.
Includes index.
1. Hallam, Arthur Henry, 1811-1833­
Correspondence. 2. Poets, English—19th century-
Correspondence. I. Kolb, Jack, 1946­
PR4735.H4Z53 1979 824' .7 [B] 79-13490
ISBN 0-8142-0300-0
Contends
Acknowledgments ix

List of Abbreviations xvii

Editorial Principles xvii

Introduction I

The Letters 41

Appendix 795

Index 805