Liszt was romantically involved with many women during his life, including the writer George Sand and the Princess Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein. In brief, Liszt quickly became a favorite of intellectual and artistic circles in France, not only because of his talent but also because of his fascinating personality; in addition, his popularity was enhanced by his generosity, his fine family background, and his ability as a writer and critic. .

             This first period of his writing was also referred to as the "Parisian Period" and it roughly lasted from about 1826-1839 (Longyear 105.) Most of the works written during this period were either unpublished or revised several years later; most of the changes were in pianistic layout and/or structural cohesion. Many speculate that the delayed publishing was due to Liszt's knowledge that the public was not yet ready for his new ideas. Yet in spite of all this, he still managed to write many beautiful and important works, including the first two books of Annees de pelerinage, the Transcendental Etudes, and Grand Galop chromatique, his only major work not revised (Longyear 105.) His Transcendental Etudes were works of great virtuosity but was later revised in 1852, further simplified because of the "virtually insuperable" pianistic difficulties of the 1826 and 1839 editions (Longyear 106). The pieces were written in the same school as Chopin, as proof of the etude, "a piece designed to aid the student of an instrument in developing his technical ability", as a medium to combine technical difficulty with high artistic quality, thereby creating a truly outstanding concert piece (Randal 161). The descriptively titled individual pieces in his first two books of Annees de pelerinage, translated as Years of Pilgrimage, ranged from quietly lyrical like. "Ecolgue" or "Spossalio" to full fledged symphonic poems of piano such as "Valleen d'Obermann" and even dissonances anticipating "strange harmonies of the future" in "Il Penserosa.