This book examines how Tennysons career was mediated, organised and directed by the publishing industry. Founded on neglected archival material, it examines the scale and distribution of Tennysons book sales in Britain and America, the commercial logic of publishing poetry, and how illustrated gift books and visual culture both promoted and interrogated the Poet Laureate and his life. Major publishers had become disillusioned with poetry by the time that Edward Moxon founded his business in 1830 but by the mid-1860s, his firm presided over a resurgence in poetry based on Tennysons work. Moxon not only orchestrated Tennysons rise to fame but was a major influence on how the Victorian public experienced the poetry of the Romantic period. This study reevaluates his crucial role, and examines how he repackaged poetry for the Victorian public.

Jim Cheshire is Reader in Cultural History at the University of Lincoln, UK. His research examines the material, literary and visual culture of the nineteenth century. He works on publishing history, literary celebrity, Victorian medievalism, stained glass and Victorian interior design.

Introduction.- Chapter 1. Edward Moxon in Context.- Chapter 2. Tennyson by Numbers: Edward Moxon and the Business of Publishing.- Chapter 3. Publishing Tennyson in America.- Chapter 4. Moxon, Tennyson and the Illustrated Book.- Chapter 5. James Bertrand Payne and the Demise of the Moxon Firm.- Chapter 6. Fame and its Consequences.- Conclusion. Tennyson and the Evolution of Victorian Publishing.- Index.-