FIRST EDITIONS

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The library is full of old books of poetry, which are almost all scanned now and online, thanks to Google and the Internet Archive. If you want to see the actual first edition, everything from the original title page and table of contents to the entire contents, available as page images or plain text, there are a surprising number of important nineteenth-century editions online. The key is knowing which editions have “authority.” Authoritative editions are ones that were published during the poet’s lifetime by his or her publisher, which would mean the publisher worked directly with the poet’s manuscripts and the poet proofread the text. The edition lists below are restricted to the authoritative English editions for the poets.

Matthew Arnold

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

William Wordsworth

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