In Memoriam
TENNYSON, Lord Alfred
'TIS BETTER TO HAVE LOVED AND LOST'
Published: C Kegan Paul, 1880
Stock code: 32571
Price: £78.00
8vo., First Edition, on laid paper, with etched portrait frontispiece (original tissue guard present), and title in red and black, free endpapers mildly browned; publisher's full vellum, upper board and backstrip lettered in red and blocked in black, gilt top, uncut, covers lightly age-soiled else a very good, bright, clean, crisp copy.
Written in requiem for Tennyson's close friend Arthur Henry Hallam, 'In Memoriam' is widely acknowledged as one of the great lyrical literary works of the nineteenth century. It is the source of the oft-quoted quatrain 'I hold it true, whate'er befall; I feel it when I sorrow most; 'Tis better to have loved and lost; Than never to have loved at all'. (Canto 27).