Leigh Hunt, in the Church of England Quarterly Review, praised the book and called Tennyson "a kind of philosophical Keats". Whatever is touched is spoiled." The reviewers differed from him on this point indeed their reaction to the whole book was generally favourable, and not only because several of them were personal friends of Tennyson. Robert Browning deplored the revisions there, privately writing that "The alterations are insane. Such I discover, to my own satisfaction, is this Book of Alfred's." Edward FitzGerald thought it "such a volume as has not been published since the time of Keats: and which…will never be suffered to die", but when it came to the old poems in the first volume he deplored the inclusion of "the Merman, the Mermaid, and those everlasting Eleanores, Isabels, – which always were, and are, and must be, a nuisance". ![]() Thomas Carlyle found it "infinitely gratifying to find one true soul more, a great melodious Poet-soul, breathing the vital air along with us. ![]() Tennyson's friends were enthusiastic about the new poems included in the second volume. Publication Ĭlarkson Frederick Stanfield illustration for the 10th edition 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. By 1840 the work of revision and composition was complete, or virtually so. In the new poems contained in the second volume he also took to heart the general tenor of the advice his critics had given. This in many cases, such as Œnone and The Lady of Shalott, resulted in greatly improved versions. 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. 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. ![]() 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.
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