Arthur Hallam, Tennyson’s close friend and fiancé to his sister Emilia, died the same year. Tennyson returned to Lincolnshire after his father’s death in 1831 and published his second collection, which included “The Lady of Shalott,” in 1833.

Poems Chiefly Lyrical, his first collection, was published in 1830 and contains the celebrated poems “Claribel” and “Mariana.” At Cambridge, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellor’s Gold Medal for his piece “Timbuktu” at age 20. He attended King Edward VI Grammar School in Louth and entered Trinity College in Cambridge in 1827. The son of an Anglican clergyman, Alfred Tennyson was born in 1809 and raised in Somersby, Lincolnshire, England. While the differences between the two versions will be addressed in this guide, all quoted lines reference the original 1832 version unless otherwise specified. The Lady of Shalott has had a broad impact on western literature, music, and art, especially amongst the English Pre-Raphaelite painters. The second version includes a different ending, altered to conform with Victorian social mores concerning gender and suicide. In 1842, he published a 19-stanza version, which strayed further from its source material in Donna di Scalotta. Tennyson published the original version of the poem in 1832 with 20 stanzas. The Lady of Shalott falls in unrequited love with Sir Lancelot after seeing him ride by on a horse, decides to leave the tower, and ultimately dies. Based on Arthurian legend and medieval sources, the poem tells the story of Elaine of Astolat, a fictional woman confined to a tower overlooking the fields surrounding Camelot. It makes use of vivid romantic language and heavy symbolism. “The Lady of Shalott,” one of Lord Alfred Tennyson’s best-known poems, is a four-part lyrical ballad loosely inspired by the 13th-century Italian novella Donna di Scalotta.

Tennyson poem the lady of shalott