ABSTRACT
Published 1864 Written Nov. 1861–April 1862 (A. Woolner, Thomas Woolner, 1917, p. 208; Mat ii 351). After discussing Idylls of the King, T. wrote to the Duke of Argyll, Feb. 1862: ‘I am now about my Fisherman which is heroic too in its way’ (Letters ii 297). T. wrote to his wife Emily, 26 April 1862: ‘Spedding is coming to hear me read the Fisherman’ (Letters ii 305). Walter White, 13 Feb. 1864, reports T. as saying that ‘he had had a proof more than a year, could not yet make up his mind to publish’ (Journals, 1898, p. 155). At one stage the poem was to be called simply Enoch (early mock-up, Lincoln) The many biblical echoes in the poem suggest also Genesis v 24: ‘And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him’. Like Aylmer’s Field (II 657), it was based on a prose sketch sent by T.’s friend Thomas Woolner (pp. 208–12), who had read the story in 1854 and had since told it to T. (For a faint doubt as to Amy Woolner’s text, see P. G. Scott, TRB i, 1968, item C6; and for a reassurance, L. Ormond, Tennyson and Thomas Woolner (1981), pp. 25–6.) T. took the outline and many details from Woolner’s The Fisherman’s Story, but in Woolner there were no names; no episode with Philip seeing Enoch and Annie in love (ll. 61–78); and none of the pressures on Enoch to make the voyage (ll. 101–10). The ‘sickly’ babe (l. 229) was deduced from Woolner’s reference to its death; Woolner gave no details of the parting, or of Philip’s courtship; no praying for a sign (ll. 485–504); no details of life on the tropical island; and no details of the journey home. Woolner’s ending was much expanded by T., who omitted Woolner’s detail of ‘no news… beyond the fact that the ship… was wrecked,… and all hands lost’.
