Tennyson's Troubled Years with Moxon & Co.: A Publishing Relationship

Abstract

Alfred Tennyson was often reluctant to put his poems into print. In fact, early in his career only the efforts of persuasive friends like Arthur Hallam and Edward Fitz Gerald and the dedication of a committed poetry publisher like Edward Moxon enabled the poems ever to see publication. It was only after the appearance in 1850 ofIn 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 conviction of others to undermine his own judgment in the practical details of publication.