Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892) was the most popular poet of Victorian Britain and Poet Laureate for forty-two years. His works include In Memoriam, an elegy for his friend Arthur Hallam, The Lady of Shalott, Ulysses, The Charge of the Light Brigade and Idylls of the King, a retelling of the Arthurian legends.
Works
Poems, In Memoriam A. H. H., Maud, and Other Poems
A Lincolnshire rectory
Tennyson was born in 1809 at Somersby, Lincolnshire, the fourth of twelve children of a rector, George Tennyson, a learned but bitter man who drank heavily. The children grew up surrounded by books and wrote poetry from an early age; Alfred published a volume with his brother Charles while still in his teens.
At Trinity College, Cambridge, he joined the Apostles, a society of brilliant students, and formed a deep friendship with Arthur Henry Hallam, who became engaged to his sister Emily. His early collections, published in 1830 and 1832, included The Lady of Shalott, but a harsh review hurt him deeply.
In Memoriam
In 1833 Hallam died suddenly in Vienna, at twenty-two. The shock silenced Tennyson for nearly ten years, during which he published almost nothing, while writing short elegies for his friend. His Poems of 1842, containing Ulysses and Morte d'Arthur, finally established his reputation.
In 1850 he published In Memoriam A. H. H., the fruit of seventeen years of mourning, doubt and slow recovery. The same year he married Emily Sellwood after a long engagement and succeeded Wordsworth as Poet Laureate.
The Laureate
As Laureate, Tennyson wrote public poems such as the Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington and The Charge of the Light Brigade, about a disastrous cavalry charge in the Crimean War in 1854. He spent decades on Idylls of the King, a cycle of poems on King Arthur and his knights.
Wealthy and famous, he lived on the Isle of Wight and later in Surrey. Queen Victoria, who found consolation in In Memoriam after the death of Prince Albert, became his friend, and in 1884 he was made a baron. He died in 1892 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.
Anecdotes
Read in the newspaper
Tennyson wrote The Charge of the Light Brigade in a few minutes in December 1854, after reading in The Times an account of the charge at Balaclava, in which a phrase about someone having blundered caught his attention. The poem was printed in a newspaper a week later and copies were sent to the soldiers in the Crimea.
A recorded voice
In 1890 an agent of Thomas Edison recorded Tennyson reading some of his poems, including The Charge of the Light Brigade, on wax cylinders. The crackling recordings have survived and allow us to hear the voice of a poet born in 1809.
Frequently asked questions
Why is Tennyson called Lord Tennyson?
Queen Victoria made him Baron Tennyson in 1884, the first time a writer was raised to the peerage for his poetry.
Who was Arthur Hallam?
Tennyson's closest friend at Cambridge, engaged to his sister, whose sudden death in 1833 inspired In Memoriam.
How long was Tennyson Poet Laureate?
From 1850 until his death in 1892, forty-two years, longer than any other holder of the post.