The development of Tennyson's genius, methods, aims and capacity of
achievement in poetry can be studied with singular precision and fulness
in the history of the poems included in the present volume. In 1842 he
published the two volumes which gave him, by almost general consent, the
first place among the poets of his time, for, though Wordsworth was
alive, Wordsworth's best work had long been done. These two volumes
contained poems which had appeared before, some in 1830 and some in
1832, and some which were then given to the world for the first time, so
that they represent work belonging to three eras in the poet's life,
poems written before he had completed his twenty-second year and
belonging for the most part to his boyhood, poems written in his early
manhood, and poems written between his thirty-first and thirty-fourth
year.

The poems published in 1830 had the following title-page:

"Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, by Alfred Tennyson.
London: Effingham Wilson, Royal Exchange, 1830".

They are fifty-six in number and the titles are:--


Claribel..
Lilian. .
Isabel. .
Elegiacs.
The "How" and the "Why".
Mariana. .
To----. Madeline.
The Merman.