The Holy Grail and Other Poems
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Tennyson, Alfred Lord. The Holy Grail and Other Poems. London: Strahan and Co., 1870.
When Pre-Raphaelite artists and Victorian writers rediscovered Malory as a source of inspiration, major works based on the Morte were produced. The greatest and most influential of these was the Idylls of the King by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892). Tennyson's Arthurian interest spanned his career. He wrote at least a part of the short poem called 'Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere' in 1830 (though it was not published until 1842). The important poem 'The Lady of Shalott' was first published in 1833 and then in a revised form in 1842. The well-known 'Sir Galahad' also appeared in 1842. And his 'Merlin and the Gleam' was published in 1889. In addition to these short poems, Tennyson worked on his Idylls of the King for most of his career. This epic poem that began with the notebook version of 'Morte d'Arthur' in 1833 (a poem published in 1842 that later formed part of the idyll 'The Passing of Arthur') was virtually finished in 1885 with the publication of the 'Balin and Balan' idyll in Tiresias and Other Poems (although he was still making small changes as late as 1891). In between, the poems that comprise the finished epic appeared in various stages. The trial volume Enid and Nimuë: The True and the False (1857) was recalled by Tennyson, (The copy in the British Museum is the only surviving example.)
In 1859 Idylls of the King, a volume containing four idylls: 'Enid,' 'Vivien,' 'Elaine,' and 'Guinevere' was published. Later the names of three of the idylls were changed ('Elaine' becoming 'Lancelot and Elaine'; 'Vivien' becoming Merlin and Vivien'; and 'Enid' first becoming 'Geraint and Enid' and later being divided into two idylls ['The Marriage of Geraint' and 'Geraint and Enid']), as Tennyson strove for the twelve parts conventional in an epic. The 1859 volume was followed in 1869 by the publication of The Holy Grail and Other Poems, containing 'The Coming of Arthur,' 'The Holy Grail,' 'Pelleas and Ettarre,' and 'The Passing of Arthur'; then in 1872 by Gareth and Lynette, containing 'Gareth and Lynette' and 'The Last Tournament'; and finally in 1885 by Tiresias and Other Poems, in which 'Balin and Balan' appeared. Malory was Tennyson's source for all of these idylls, except the two devoted to Enid and Geraint, which take their inspiration from the translation of the Mabinogion published by Lady Charlotte Guest in 1849.