I FIND some difficulty in acknowledging the many sources on which I have drawn in the preparation of this volume. The British Museum catalogue records some two hundred and fifty books bearing directly upon Tennyson himself or upon his writings, and there is scarcely a work on the literature or life of the Victorian age in which he is not mentioned. To acknowledge all such sources would be to overload the text with notes or unduly to encumber the preface. It is only fitting, however, that I should specifically record my indebtedness to those works which I have found of greatest value. First among these must always come the present Lord Tennyson's "Memoir " on his father, and the companion volume, "Tennyson and his Friends," which we also owe to his industry and filial devotion. The "Memoir" is not only the standard work upon the poet, but is itself, in its clear construction and outright simplicity, a remarkable literary achievement. I would next mention the brilliant, but unfortunately posthumous and incomplete, work of Professor Lounsbury, published by the Yale University Press, under the title of "Life and Times of Tennyson, 1809-1850." From this delightful book I have drawn largely but I hope not unscrupulously. Among the shorter biographies of the poet the best is perhaps that by Mr. Arthur Waugh; the studies by Andrew Lang, S. Gwynn, A. C. Benson and Sir A. Lyall have also been invaluable. I have found some useful material in Canon Rawnsley's "Memories of the Tennysons," in Mr. Masterman's "Tennyson as a |