Table Of ContentTENNYSON AND HIS PUBLISHERS
Frontispiece Alfred Tennyson. From a photograph (circa 1860) by James Mudd
of Manchester
TENNYSON AND HIS
PUBLISHERS
June Steffensen Hagen
© June Steffensen Hagen 1979
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1St edition 1979 978-0-333-25931-3
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
without permission
First published 1979 by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
London and Basingstoke
Associated companies in Delhi
Dublin Hong Kong Johannesburg Lagos
Melbourne New York Singapore Tokyo
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Hagen, June Steffensen
Tennyson and his publishers
I. Tennyson, Alfred, Baron Tennyson - Friends
and associates
2. Authors and publishers - Great Britain
I. Title
821 '.8 PR5583
ISBN 978-1-349-04438-2 ISBN 978-1-349-04436-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-04436-8
This book is sold subject
to the standard conditions
of the Net Book Agreement
In memory of my mother, Emma). Steffensen,
and
for Jim
either sex alone
Is half itself, and in true marriage lies
Nor equal, nor unequal: each folfils
Defect in each, and always thought in thought,
Purpose in purpose, will in will, they grow,
The single pure and perfect animal,
The two-celled heart beating, with one foil stroke,
Life.
Tennyson, The Princess, VII, .2.83-90
Contents
List of Plates viii
Preface xi
Acknowledgments XIV
I Introduction: Tennyson's Early Publishing (I827-3 I) I
2 Persuasive Friends: Moxon, Hallam, FitzGerald (I 8 p-
4I) 2I
3 Heyday for Publisher and Poet Laureate: Edward Moxon
(I842-s8) s8
4 Troubled Years with Moxon & Co. (I8S8-68) IOO
s
Successors: Strahan, King, and Kegan Paul (I869-83) 119
6 Final Choice: Alexander Macmillan (I884-92) IS8
Appendixes:
1 Tennyson Editions I86
II Deed of Agreement, I4 February I879, Between Alfred
Tennyson and C. Kegan Paul & Co. I88
Notes I94
Bibliography 2I4
Index 22I
vii
List of Plates
Frontispiece: Alfred Tennyson
(Between pp. 128 and 129)
1. Proof page of "Book-making" (later entitled "Poets and their
Bibliographers"), showing Tennyson's extensive corrections,
revisions and additions
2. Emily Tennyson's handwritten list of semi-yearly income from
Idylls of the King, Enoch Arden, and Selections
3· Alfred Tennyson's handwritten letter (I7 April I867) to
J. Bertrand Payne, partner in Moxon & Co.
4· "The Lady of Shalott" illustration by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
s
for the Illustrated Edition of Tennyson's Poems (Moxon, I 8 7)
s.
Charles Kegan Paul, Tennyson's publisher from I879 to I883.
Reproduced from F. A. Mumby, The House ofR outledge, 1834-
1934 (London: Routledge, I934)
6. Alexander Macmillan, Tennyson's publisher from I 884 to
I 892. Reproduced in C. L. Graves, Life and Letters of Alexander
Macmillan (London: Macmillan, I9IO)
7. Alfred Tennyson
8. Emily Tennyson with sons Hallam and Lionel
9· Aldworth, Tennyson's home in Blackdown, Sussex
IO. "Merlin and Vivien" illustration by Julia Margaret Cameron
for Idylls of the King (Cabinet Edition, King, I 874).
Reproduced by permission of the National Portrait Gallery
I 1. Title-page to trial copy of The Holy Grail and Other Poems
(Strahan, I 869)
I2. The parting of Lancelot and Guinevere. "Guinevere" illus
tration by Gustav Dore for the folio edition of Idylls of the King
(Moxon & Co., I867). Reproduced by permission of the
Mansell Collection
I3. Guinevere's last meeting with Arthur. "Guinevere" illustration
V111
List of Plates ix
by Gustav Dore for the folio edition of Idylls of the King (Moxon
& Co., 1867). Reproduced by permission of the Mansell
Collection
The frontispiece and plates 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9 and II are from the
Tennyson Research Centre Collection and are reproduced by
courtesy of Lord Tennyson, the Tennyson Society and Lincolnshire
Library Service.
Preface
Always the artist before the merchant, Alfred Tennyson was often
reluctant to put his poems into print. In fact, early in his career only
the efforts of persuasive friends such as Arthur Hallam and Edward
FitzGerald and the dedication of such a committed poetry publisher
as Edward Moxon enabled the poems ever to see publication. It was
only after the appearance in I 8 50 of In Memoriam, for which Moxon
particularly pressed, that the forty-one-year-old Tennyson felt sure
enough of his own work to make such decisions by himself. After this
success, he seldom allowed the convictions of others to undermine his
own good judgment in the practical details of publication.
On the major occasion when Tennyson failed to heed his own
instincts about format and yielded to his publisher's wishes, both poet
and publisher soon regretted it. Later repercussions from this single
miscalculation contributed heavily to Tennyson's breach with the
Moxon firm. I speak here of the celebrated Illustrated Edition of
Tennyson's Poems published by Edward Moxon in I 857. A decade of
difficulty, centering first on this edition and then on others, followed
Edward Moxon's death in I858.
With Moxon himself Tennyson had a close friendship, which
began when both men were just starting their respective careers and
which continued into their respective heydays. They dined and
smoked and laughed together; they went on holiday together in
Switzerland; they knew and cared about each other's wives and
children. Only at the end of his life, this time with Alexander
Macmillan, who had been a family friend for a full thirty years before
finally becoming the aging laureate's publisher, did Tennyson again
go beyond the bounds of a cordial, business relationship. With
various other publishers - J. and J. Jackson, Effingham Wilson,
Alexander Strahan, Henry S. King, Charles Kegan Paul- his
dealings were never primarily personal.
Tennyson expected his own tastes to be honored in the printing,
binding and advertising ofhis poems, with the publishers being given
a free hand in matters of distribution, sales, and demands for new
xi
