4 Alfred, Lord Tennyson first editions are documented on this shelf, from Poems, Chiefly Lyrical (1830) to Idylls of the King (1859) across 2 different publishers. Each linked guide gives the points of issue that separate a true first printing of that Alfred, Lord Tennyson title from later printings and book-club copies — the publisher and year to expect, the number-line or edition-statement conventions, and the tells that show up in online listings.
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- Poems, Chiefly Lyrical — 1830 · Effingham WilsonTennyson's first solo-authored book, collating 154 pages of text, fifty-six poems, with a leaf of errata and no table of contents. First state has page 91 misnumbered "19"; the errata leaf and a two-page publisher's advertisement at the end are called for in a complete copy. A secondary state point is the correct spelling of "Carcanet" on page 72, since variant spellings were corrected at the printer before…. Tennyson later suppressed or heavily revised many of these fifty-six poems, and a number were never reprinted in his later collected volumes; a copy of a later nineteenth-century collected edition of Tennyson's Poems or Poetical Works is a different, revised book, not the 1830 Effingham Wilson first edition with its original errata leaf and boards.
- In Memoriam A.H.H. — 1850 · Edward MoxonPublished anonymously, with no author's name on the title page, under the Latin sub-heading "A.H.H. OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII." First edition, first issue carries the misprint "the sullen tree" (for "thee, sullen tree") on page 2, and the misprint "baseness" for "bareness" on page 198; both are silently corrected in the second and third editions issued the same year, which otherwise closely reset the same text.…. The second and third editions of 1850 read almost identically to the first apart from the corrected misprints, so a copy must be checked against these specific textual points, not merely the 1850 date, to confirm first-edition status; later Moxon and successor printings that print Tennyson's name on the title page post-date the anonymous first issue.
- Maud, and Other Poems — 1855 · Edward MoxonSmall octavo collating viii, 154, (ii) pages, containing the first appearance in book form of "The Charge of the Light Brigade," previously printed in the Examiner newspaper (9 December 1854) and in a broadside privately issued for Crimean War soldiers. First printing, first issue lacks any publisher's advertisements; a first-edition, second-issue state has an 8-page Moxon catalogue dated August 1855 inserted at…. Cited in the trade as Hayward 248, Wise 58, and Tinker 2080; the presence, absence, and date of the inserted Moxon advertisement leaves is the practical way to place a given copy within the 1855 first-edition printing sequence.
- Idylls of the King — 1859 · Edward MoxonFirst edition contains only four idylls, "Enid," "Vivien," "Elaine," and "Guinevere," collating [viii], 261 pages; the much longer twelve-idyll cycle familiar today was assembled by Tennyson only gradually, in installments published in 1869, 1872, and 1885. First issue has the verso of the title leaf blank. Collates with 8 pages of publisher's advertisements at the front dated July 1859; bound in light green…. A copy of Idylls of the King containing more than the original four idylls (for example with "Gareth and Lynette," "The Coming of Arthur," or "Balin and Balan") is by definition a later, expanded edition. The original four idylls were also individually retitled later ("Enid" was eventually split into "The Marriage of Geraint" and "Geraint and Enid"), so a true first edition should still show the single original….
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