ABSTRACT
Published Contemporary Review, Dec. 1871; then 1872. T. thought of writing ‘a poem on Tristram and Isolt’ in 1859 (Mat. ii 218). Sir Charles Tennyson points out that the germ of it is in prose in the H.MS of Gareth and Lynette, written 1869–72. On this, see D. Staines, who gives a transcript of this prose draft (H.Nbk 40) in Harvard Library Bulletin xxii (1974) 300–301. On 8 Nov. 1870, ‘he repeated some of The Last Tournament which he had just written’ (Mem. ii 100); the poem was read aloud 2 May 1871 (E.T. to H.T., Lincoln), and completed by 21 May 1871 (Mem. ii 104). ‘The bare outline of the story and of the vengeance of Mark is taken from Malory [viii–x]; my father often referred with pleasure to his creation of the half-humorous, half-pathetic fool Dagonet’ (H.T.). J. M. Gray shows that the Red Knight ‘is carefully modelled on selected details in Malory’ (Notes and Queries ccxxii, 1977, 405–7).
