The previously unknown proof with extensive autograph revisions would have been intriguing enough for the Tennyson Research Centre in Lincoln, where there are 200 sets of proofs of Tennyson's poems from his earliest volume through to his last, by far the biggest collection in the world, but it came with added benefits.
The proof was bound with the last pages of 'The Passing of Arthur', dated 'Dec 29 1872', and a request of James Knowles, editor and architect, to 'Please send this back to me with [revisns]'. Knowles had wanted to publish 'To the Queen' in the Contemporary Review of January 1873, published by Strahan, who was also Tennyson's publisher. Tennyson wrote to Knowles to say that there would be no time for the Queen to see it first, so declined. In the same letter he adds, 'I send you the last corrections of the Epilogue … Please send this on to Isbister [Strahan's partner]', and 'I don't know what the firm has done with my proofs'. Here they are.
And there's more: an unpublished manuscript letter dated 1878 to James Knowles from Tennyson mentioning a 'Congress on Publishing' and 'Routledge's offer' just at the time when Tennyson was renegotiating his publishing contracts and, finally, a manuscript letter from Alexander Strahan, denying crossly that Knowles had ever been editor of the Contemporary Review, and asserting that he had only been doing Tennyson a favour by giving Knowles some experience. It is dated 1908, a full thirty years after their rift.
The whole 'lot' enhances important aspects of the holdings of Lincoln's Tennyson Research Centre.