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Poems by Alfred Tennyson

1857
Not on view
In 1857 Edward Moxon brought out a new edition of Tennyson’s Poems illustrated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and fellow Pre-Raphaelites William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais. The first two artists created unconventional medievalist images to accompany poems they revered. Rossetti's illustration, created for the poem Sir Galahad, portrays King Arthur’s purest knight resting at a woodland shrine during his quest for the Holy Grail. In the poem, invisible mystical forces tend the shrine, but Rossetti represented female angels clustered beneath the altar, ringing a bell. George Somes Layard wrote in the nineteenth century that "Millais realised, Holman Hunt idealised, and Rossetti transcendentalized the subjects which they respectively illustrated."

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Poems by Alfred Tennyson
  • Author: Alfred Tennyson (British, Somersby, Lincolnshire 1809–1892 Surrey)
  • Sitter: Frontispiece of Alfred Tennyson (British, Somersby, Lincolnshire 1809–1892 Surrey)
  • Designer: Frontispiece from a medallion by Thomas Woolner (British, Hadleigh, Suffolk 1825–1892 London)
  • Engraver: Frontispiece engraved by Henry Robinson (British, active 1827–72)
  • Illustrator: Thomas Creswick (British, Sheffield 1811–1869 London)
  • Illustrator: Sir John Everett Millais (British, Southampton 1829–1896 London)
  • Illustrator: William Holman Hunt (British, London 1827–1910 London)
  • Illustrator: William Mulready (Irish, Ennis 1786–1863 London)
  • Illustrator: John Callcott Horsley (British, London 1817–1903 London)
  • Illustrator: Dante Gabriel Rossetti (British, London 1828–1882 Birchington-on-Sea)
  • Illustrator: Clarkson Stanfield (British, Sunderland 1793–1867 London)
  • Illustrator: Daniel Maclise (Irish, Cork 1806–1870 London)
  • Engraver: Thomas Williams (British, Colchester, Essex 1798–1862 after)
  • Engraver: Dalziel Brothers (British, active 1839–93)
  • Engraver: John Thompson (British, Manchester 1785–1866 London)
  • Engraver: William James Linton (British, London 1812–1897 New Haven, Connecticut)
  • Engraver: W. T. Green (British, active 1837–72)
  • Dedicatee: Queen Victoria (British, London 1819–1901 East Cowes, Isle of Wight)
  • Publisher: Edward Moxon & Company (London)
  • Printer: Bradbury & Evans
  • Date: 1857
  • Medium: Illustrations: mezzotint, wood engraving
  • Dimensions: 9 x 6 5/8 x 1 3/4 in. (22.9 x 16.8 x 4.4 cm)
  • Classification: Books
  • Credit Line: Rogers Fund, 1920
  • Object Number: 20.32
  • Curatorial Department: Drawings and Prints

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