The first volume of the book consists of poems taken from his 1830 Poems, Chiefly Lyrical and 1832 Poems, and the second consists of new work. Tennyson had been severely stung by the more hostile reviews of the 1832 book, which had found some of his poems silly, affected and obscure. He meant to reinstate himself in critical esteem, and to this end he very heavily revised the best of his earlier work, often following the reviewers’ detailed criticisms. This in many cases, such as Œnone and The Lady of Shalott, resulted in greatly improved versions. In the new poems contained in the second volume he also took to heart the general tenor of the advice his critics had given. By 1840 the work of revision and composition was complete, or virtually so. The increasing danger of his earlier poems being pirated in their unrevised forms in America impelled him to forestall that threat by finding a publisher, and in March 1842, partly at his friend Edward FitzGerald's insistence, a contract was signed with Edward Moxon.
Publication
A first edition of 800 copies was published by Moxon on 14 May, of which 500 copies had been sold by September. An edition was published in Boston the same year by the firm of W. D. Ticknor, who sent Tennyson one of the first copyright payments made by any American publisher to a British writer. Home sales were from the start highly encouraging, and his two-thirds profit agreement with Moxon earned Tennyson more than £600 during the first four years, alleviating his serious financial difficulties. As succeeding editions came out Tennyson began to add more poems, such as Come Not When I Am Dead and The Eagle. The 10th edition, in 1857, was illustrated by Rossetti, Millais, Holman Hunt and others, and by 1868 a 19th edition had appeared.
Reception
Tennyson's friends were enthusiastic about the new poems included in the second volume. Thomas Carlyle found it "infinitely gratifying to find one true soul more, a great melodious Poet-soul, breathing the vital air along with us. Such I discover, to my own satisfaction, is this Book of Alfred's." Edward FitzGerald thought it "such a volume as has not been published since the time of Keats: and which…will never be suffered to die", but when it came to the old poems in the first volume he deplored the inclusion of "the Merman, the Mermaid, and those everlasting Eleanores, Isabels, – which always were, and are, and must be, a nuisance". Robert Browning deplored the revisions there, privately writing that "The alterations are insane. Whatever is touched is spoiled." The reviewers differed from him on this point; indeed their reaction to the whole book was generally favourable, and not only because several of them were personal friends of Tennyson. Leigh Hunt, in the Church of England Quarterly Review, praised the book and called Tennyson "a kind of philosophical Keats". James Spedding wanted to see a long poem from him; he also, along with John Sterling and the anonymous reviewer in the Atlas, thought that human sympathy was the strong point of the volume. On the other hand the Christian Remembrancer believed Tennyson "had not yet become human enough", and similarly the Westminster Review, the London University Magazine and Hogg's Weekly Instructor urged him to draw on the sympathies of his own personal experiences. Many reviewers encouraged him to introduce more contemporary relevance and didacticism into his poems, rather than indulging his Romantic temperament. There was widespread agreement that the best poems were those dealing with domestic life, even when they were somewhat trite. The overall outcome of the publication of Poems was that Tennyson began to be taken much more seriously than he had previously been, with many seeing him as the leading poet of the younger generation, worthy of one day being made Poet Laureate.
