PREFACE

"THE PRINCESS " has been edited with elaborate and full notes by Prof. Percy M. Wallace (Macmillan), especially for use in the schools of India; and also by William J. Rolfe (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.) and Henry W. Boynton (Leach, Shewell & Sanborn), especially for American schools. The notes of the three editions are largely, of necessity, the same in substance, but differ in fulness and number. "A Study of The Princess," by S. E. Dawson (Sampson, Low & Co.), is the original source of much of the better criticism of the poem in these editions, as well as in other books on Tennyson lately published. The biography of Tennyson has not yet appeared, and in lieu of it the best information about his personality is to be found in a few passages of Fitzgerald's and Carlyle's "Letters," in Mrs. Anne Thackeray-Ritchie's "Records of Tennyson, Ruskin, Browning," and in Mr. Knowles's reminiscences in the Nineteenth Century Magazine (1892-93). Two volumes of criticism by Americans, E. C. Stedman's "Victorian Poets," and Dr. Henry Van Dyke's "Poetry of Tennyson," deserve mention. A bibliography of Tennyson, very complete, by R. H. Shepherd, was recently published. In preparing the present edition, I have referred to most of these volumes, as well as to others dealing more generally with Tennyson's genius and work, and special obligations have been properly accredited in the places where they occur; but it gives me pleasure to acknowledge gratefully the assistance I have derived from all of them. G. E. WOODBERRY.

BEVERLY, MASS., August 27, 1896.