ABSTRACT
Published 1869 (‘1870’). Written 1869 (CT,p. 382). T. created it from his Morte d’Arthur (1842), which forms ll. 170–440 of The Passing of Arthur. (For the only changes in wording, see ll. 175 ^?6n, and l. 373n.) For detailed notes to these lines, including the relevant passages from Malory, see Morte d’Arthur (p. 148). T. comments: ‘The temporary triumph of evil, the confusion of moral order, closing in the Great Battle of the West.’ The title had been The Death of Arthur in the trial edition (1869), for details of which see Wise, Bibliography i 197–209. Anne Ritchie, Harper’s Magazine vii (1883) 31, reports: ‘The first Idyll and the last, I have heard Mr Tennyson say, are intentionally more archaic than the others.’ J. Pfordresher describes a MS draft of ll. 1–5, 80–97 (Georgetown University) not listed in his edition, ‘an early stage in the composition of the poem’ (TRB ii, 1976, 203–4). For. T.’s prose draft of the opening (H.Nbk 37), see D. Staines, Harvard Library Bulletin xxii (1974) 292–3.
