A Semiological Reading of Alfred Tennyson’s Idylls of the King and Other Poems and Julia Margaret Cameron’s Photographic Illustrations

Alfred Tennyson’s Idylls of the King and Other Poems connects poetry with photographic illustrations by Julia Margaret Cameron. The book is one of the pioneering examples of illustrated poetry. Cameron had her friends and family members dressed in medieval clothes to pose for her and photographed them for Tennyson’s epic. However, when she willingly accepted Tennyson’s request to illustrate his poetry book with photographs, she did not envisage how her photographs would look reduced in scale in a poetry book. Then she had them reprinted in a deluxe edition to increase the effect of poetry through her photographic illustrations. In time, her portraits of family and friends reached a level of not only illustrating Tennyson’s poems but also passing over the influence of poetry. Cameron’s photographs, despite the technological difficulties of her age in printing photography, reflected the themes and characters of Tennyson’s poems to carry their meanings further.