POEMS - Illustrated

London And New York: MacMillan. Very Good. 1893. First Edition Thus. Hardcover. xiii, (3), 374, (20) pages; Unmarked and secure in original dark green cloth binding with extensive gilt tooled decoration at spine and front board in a swirling pattern of acorns and leaves; dark green endpapers; all edges gilt; scattered foxing -- mostly limited to the blank versos of the endpapers and first and last few leaves of the text; light wear at corners. A very nice example of this lovely Victorian book presenting Tennyson's poems, accompanied by more than 50 wonderful woodcut illustrations after works by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, J. E. Millais, W. H. Hunt, and other Pre-Raphaelites. The first edition of this book was published by E. Moxon in 1857. Simon Cooke's book 'The Moxon Tennyson: A Landmark in Victorian Illustration' (2021) asserts the Moxon edition was extremely influential, changing book design in fundamental ways. Some suggest it dramatically redefined the relationship between images and words in print, introducing the "golden age" of British woodcut illustrations. Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892) succeeded William Wordsworth as Poet Laureate in 1850 and is regarded as the chief representative of poetry in the Victorian age. The selection of Tennyson's poetry for this creative excursion into book illustration seems most appropritate. As Cooke points out: "Tennyson is often described, in the words of William Allingham, as a "painter's poet" or "painter in words" who deploys an intensely visual technique embodying color, light, materialized details, expressive space, figures arranged or "composed, " and a strong emphasis on the dynamics of looking. Though he uses incantatory devices, he was more interested in showing than telling, structuring his verse as a dense montage of pictorial tableaux made up of dramatic situations in the manner of genre paintings, landscapes, and intricate scenes drawn from history. " ; Illustrated Books, Decorative Bindings, Most Recent Listing .