Tennyson's Enoch Arden.

Tan calf binding with brown title plate, gilt decoration and title on the spine. gilt line edging on the boards. endpapers marbled with matching edges. Fine binding by Bickers & Son, London.

Leather. Condition: Beautifully bound in contemporary full brown calf, A lovely volume. VERY GOOD.

Enoch Arden is a narrative poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, published in 1864 during his tenure as British poet laureate.

The story on which it was based was provided to Tennyson by Thomas Woolner. The poem lends its name to a principle in law that after being missing for a certain number of years (typically seven) a person may be declared dead for purposes of remarriage and inheritance of their survivors.

Fisherman-turned-merchant sailor Enoch Arden leaves his wife Annie and three children to go to sea with his old captain, having lost his job due to an accident; reflective of a masculine mindset common in that era, Enoch sacrifices his comfort and the companionship of his family in order to better support them. During the voyage, Enoch is shipwrecked on a desert island with two companions who eventually die. (This part of the story is reminiscent of Robinson Crusoe.)

Enoch remains lost for eleven and half years. Ten years after Enoch's disappearance, Phillip Ray asks Annie Arden to marry him, stating that it is obvious Enoch is dead. It was not unusual for 18th century merchant ships to remain at sea for months or years, but there was always news of a ship's whereabouts by way of other ships that had communicated with it. Phillip reminds Annie that there has been no word of Enoch's ship. Annie asks Phillip to agree to wait a year. A year passes, and Phillip proposes to Annie again. She puts him off for another half-year. Annie reads her Bible and asks for a sign as to whether Enoch is dead or alive. She dreams of Enoch being on a desert island which she misinterprets as heaven. She marries Phillip and they have a child.

Enoch finds upon his return from the sea that his wife is married happily to his childhood friend and rival and has a child by him. Enoch's life remains unfulfilled, with one of his own children now dead and his wife and remaining children now being cared for by another man.

Enoch never reveals to his wife and children that he is really alive, as he loves her too much to spoil her new happiness. Enoch dies of a broken heart.

The story could be considered a variation on and antithesis to the classical myth of Odysseus, who, after an absence of 20 years at the Trojan War and at sea, found a faithful wife who had been loyally waiting for him. The use of the name Enoch for a man who disappears from the lives of his loved ones is surely inspired by the biblical character Enoch. In fact, also the entire chronological structure of the protagonist's life with its cycles related to the biblical symbolism of the "days of Creation" binds to the name of Enoch, as demonstrated by the analysis of an Italian thinker long interested in this work, and denotes Tennyson's ability to insert theological intentions into simple elegiac mode with an unprecedented complexity in English literature

Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson FRS (6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892) was an English poet. He was the Poet Laureate during much of Queen Victoria's reign. In 1829, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal at Cambridge for one of his first pieces, "Timbuktu". He published his first solo collection of poems, Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, in 1830. "Claribel" and "Mariana", which remain some of Tennyson's most celebrated poems, were included in this volume. Although described by some critics as overly sentimental, his verse soon proved popular and brought Tennyson to the attention of well-known writers of the day, including Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Tennyson's early poetry, with its medievalism and powerful visual imagery, was a major influence on the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

Tennyson also excelled at short lyrics, such as "Break, Break, Break", "The Charge of the Light Brigade", "Tears, Idle Tears", and "Crossing the Bar". Much of his verse was based on classical mythological themes, such as "Ulysses". "In Memoriam A.H.H." was written to commemorate his friend Arthur Hallam, a fellow poet and student at Trinity College, Cambridge, after he died of a stroke at the age of 22. Tennyson also wrote some notable blank verse including Idylls of the King, "Ulysses", and "Tithonus". During his career, Tennyson attempted drama, but his plays enjoyed little success.

A number of phrases from Tennyson's work have become commonplace in the English language, including "Nature, red in tooth and claw" ("In Memoriam A.H.H."), "'Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all", "Theirs not to reason why, / Theirs but to do and die", "My strength is as the strength of ten, / Because my heart is pure", "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield", "Knowledge comes, but Wisdom lingers", and "The old order changeth, yielding place to new". He is the ninth most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations.