Alfred tennysons biography

read this poet’s poems

Born on August 6, 1809, in Somersby, Lincolnshire, England, Alfred, Lord Tennyson is one of the most well-loved Victorian poets. Tennyson, the fourth of twelve children, showed an early talent for writing. At the age of twelve he wrote a 6,000-line epic poem. His father, the Reverend George Tennyson, tutored his sons in classical and modern languages. In the 1820s, however, Tennyson’s father began to suffer frequent mental breakdowns that were exacerbated by alcoholism. One of Tennyson’s brothers had violent quarrels with his father, a second was later confined to an insane asylum, and another became an opium addict.

Tennyson escaped home in 1827 to attend Trinity College, Cambridge. In that same year, he and his brother Charles published Poems by Two Brothers. Although the poems in the book were mostly juvenilia, they attracted the attention of the “Apostles,” an undergraduate literary club led by Arthur Henry Hallam. The “Apostl

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Alfred, Lord Tennyson 1809-1892

TS Eliot said Alfred, Lord Tennyson had "the finest ear of any English poet since Milton", while lines from his Crimean War poem The Charge of the Light Brigade are indelibly lodged in the minds of even the most poetically resistant.

Tennyson was born in Lincoln in 1809, as the Napoleonic Wars raged in Europe, the fourth of 12 children. As a student at Cambridge he was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal in 1829 and published his first solo collection at 21. His second collection in 1833, however, was met with such criticism that he did not publish for ten years. But his third was successful and included Ulysses, a rally call for one last heroic action.

In 1850 Tennyson published In Memoriam AHH. Dedicated to his late friend Arthur Hallam, it was a favourite of Queen Victoria, who said the book helped to comfort after Albert's death. With Victoria's patronage, Tennyson was acclaimed as the greatest poet of his day and was appointed Poet Laureate,

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Biography of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1809-1892

Biographical Sketch by Donna-Jean Breckenridge

"I hold it true,
Whate'er befall;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all."

These oft-quoted lines by the man known as Alfred, Lord Tennyson, come from his lengthy poem, "In Memoriam." And while the typical assumption is that the poem was written after the deep pain of a broken romance, the added initials in the title, "A.H.H.," tell the full story. "A.H.H." stands for Arthur Henry Hallam, Tennyson's dear friend who died suddenly at the age of 22. Hallam, a brilliant fellow poet and classmate at Trinity College at Cambridge, had been engaged to marry Tennyson's sister, Emily.

"In Memoriam" was considered one of the greatest poems of the 19th century. It was loved bygd Queen Victoria herself, who told Tennyson that after the death of her husband, Prince Albert, she was "soothed and pleased by it."

In his day, Tennyson was said to be one of the three most famou