A Variorum Edition of Tennyson's 'Idylls of the King'

The text of the poem is that of the Eversley Edition. This is the final version which Tennyson left us, and is the version approved by the family. Close students of the successive changes Tennyson worked on his 'Idylls' recognize that it is the most perfect form of this poem.

This edition attempts to record every significant variant from every extant manuscript, printer's proof, and published edition from the poet's first drafts of the 'Morte d'Arthur' (c1833) to the publication of the Eversley Edition in 1908.

Contents: Chronological Key to Printed Editions. - Some Early Notes on Arthurian Legend. - A Discarded Idylls Passage. - Title Page Variants. - Text, with variations.

John Pfordresher is professor of English at Georgetown University, where he has been teaching since 1973. He is one of the architects of undergraduate Catholic Studies curriculum at Georgetown, for which he has served as director. His courses "The Catholic Imagination" and "Exploring Catholic Culture," are now regularly offered to Georgetown students. His primarily scholarly interests are Nineteenth-Century literature; the relationship of painting to literature in the Nineteenth century; Anglophone writers in Italy; and Catholic Studies.

Dr. Pfordresher earned his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota and B.A. from Georgetown College.

His publications include: "Variorum Edition: Tennyson's Idylls of the King" (1973); "Matthew Arnold. The Prose," in "The Critical Heritage" Series (1979); miscellaneous essays on Browning, Tennyson, Dickens, D. G. Rossetti and Pre-Raphaelite art; position papers on the teaching of literature; essays on Anglophone writing on Italy; and "Jesus and the Emergence of a Catholic Imagination" (2008).