ABSTRACT
The Lady of Shalott was the only Arthurian poem which was ready for publication in Tennyson’s 1832 volume of poems. Tennyson was only 23 when he wrote his first version of The Lady of Shalott in 1832. Reader should, for instance, be sure that they have disentangled the poem The Lady of Shalott and its sources from the visual renderings of the story, especially those which were produced after Holman Hunt’s highly interpretative drawings and paintings and accompanying explanatory essay. There is, however, a curious conflict in the evidence readers have about Tennyson’s reading of medieval sources at the time he composed The Lady of Shalott, in either its 1832 or its 1842 version. The conflict is between, on the one hand, external evidence together with the nature of the text itself, and, on the other, Tennyson’s own testimony concerning his sources.
