Briefly noted: the season's highlights from scholarly publishers; Lady Tennyson's Journal, edited and with an Introduction by James O. Hoge. Charlottesville, Va.: The University of Virginia Press. 384 pp. $24.95.

This difficult but rewarding book documents the life of England's Victorian poet laureate by recording the smallest details and providing, with an eye toward later biographers, minute accounts of what he did and read. Readers will find Tennyson a devoted husband and loving father. And Lady Tennyson an aesthetically and emotionally sensitive woman, totally absorbed in her family.