Book excerpt: Excerpt from Select Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson The text of the poems in this volume is that of the last English (1884) edition. For the readings of the editions of 1830, 1832, and 1842, I have had to depend upon quotations in the reviews and in the commentaries of Shepherd, Tainsh, Wace, Bayne, and others. These early editions are not in the Cambridge or Boston libraries, and I have not been able to find them anywhere on this side of the Atlantic. An inquiry for them inserted in the Literary World proved as unavailing as the letters I had sent to friends in various parts of the country and in Canada. I did get track of the 1832 volume in several quarters; but all these "trails," when followed up, led to a single copy belonging to Ralph Waldo Emerson, which has recently disappeared from his library and cannot be traced. He lent it, fifty years ago, to many of his friends - among them, Mr. John S. Dwight, who reviewed it in the Christian Examiner in 1833, and Mrs. Hawthorne (then Miss Peabody), who made a drawing to illustrate The Lady of Shalott. For the changes in the more recent editions, I have depended mainly on the American reprints, all of which, from 1849 down, I have been able to consult. For the readings of the first edition of the Wellington Ode, I used a copy given to the Harvard College Library by Mr. Longfellow. To explain the omission of certain pieces which are specially appropriate for school and home reading, I may add that many favorite poems suited to a younger class of readers than those for whom the present selection is designed, have been reserved for another volume. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.