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Overview
“The Lady of Shalott” is a narrative poem written by the British Victorian poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson
. Originally published in 1832 and substantively revised for a second edition in 1842, the poem was inspired by an Italian short story from the thirteenth century, titled La Damigella di Scalot. This tale tells of a young noblewoman confined in a tower upriver from Camelot. She falls in love with the knight Sir Lancelot, and she dies with this love still unrequited. To this story Tennyson added the complication of a mysterious curse as well as the title character’s desire to leave her confinement and join the living world beyond her walls. The result is one of Tennyson’s most singularly-affecting adaptations of Arthurian legend.
