Alfred Lord Tennyson

Biography of Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809 – 1892)

Alfred Lord Tennyson
Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892), English poet often regarded as the chief representative of the Victorian age in poetry. Tennyson succeeded Wordsworth as Poet Laureate in 1850.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson was born on August 5, 1809 in Somersby, Lincolnshire. His father, George Clayton Tennyson, a clergyman and rector, suffered from depression and was notoriously absentminded. Alfred began to write poetry at an early age in the style of Lord Byron. After spending four unhappy years in school he was tutored at home. Tennyson then studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he joined the literary club ‘The Apostles’ and met Arthur Hallam, who became his closest friend. Tennyson published Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, in 1830, which included the popular “Mariana”.

His next book, Poems (1833), received unfavorable reviews, and Tennyson ceased to publish for nearly ten years. Hallam died suddenly on the same year in Vienna. It was a heavy blow to Tennyson. He began to write “In Memoriam”, an elegy for his lost friend – the work took seventeen years. “The Lady of Shalott”, “The Lotus-eaters” “Morte d’Arthur” and “Ulysses” appeared in 1842 in the two-volume Poems and established his reputation as a writer.

After marrying Emily Sellwood, whom he had already met in 1836, the couple settled in Farringford, a house in Freshwater on the Isle of Wight in 1853. From there the family moved in 1869 to Aldworth, Surrey. During these later years he produced some of his best poems.

Among Tennyson’s major poetic achievements is the elegy mourning the death of his friend Arthur Hallam, “In Memoriam” (1850). This poems is commonly referred to by its first line:

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky.

The “Bells” poem is read out, translated into the Swedish “Ring, klocka, ring”, every new year’s night in Stockholm, Sweden to celebrate the dying of the old year and the birth of the new year.

The patriotic poem “Charge of the Light Brigade”, published in Maud (1855), is one of Tennyson’s best known works, although at first “Maud” was found obscure or morbid by critics ranging from George Eliot to Gladstone. Enoch Arden (1864) was based on a true story of a sailor thought drowned at sea who returned home after several years to find that his wife had remarried. Idylls Of The King (1859-1885) dealt with the Arthurian theme.

In the 1870s Tennyson wrote several plays, among them the poetic dramas Queen Mary (1875) and Harold (1876). In 1884 he was created a baron.

Tennyson died at Aldwort on October 6, 1892 and was buried in the Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey.

Biography By:

Poems By Alfred Lord Tennyson

Miscellaneous

‘And ask ye why these sad tears stream?’ (No Comments »)
A Farewell (No Comments »)
After-Thought (No Comments »)
All Things Will Die (No Comments »)
Amphion (No Comments »)
Ask Me No More (No Comments »)
Audley Court (No Comments »)
Balin and Balan (No Comments »)
Battle Of Brunanburgh (No Comments »)
Beautiful City (No Comments »)
Blow, Bugle, Blow (No Comments »)
Boadicea (No Comments »)
By an Evolutionist (No Comments »)
Charge of the Light Brigade (No Comments »)
Claribel (No Comments »)
Claribel: A Melody (No Comments »)
Come down, O Maid (No Comments »)
Come Into the Garde, Maud (No Comments »)
Come Into The Garden, Maud (No Comments »)
Come not when I am dead (No Comments »)
Cradle Song (No Comments »)
Dedication (No Comments »)
Duet (No Comments »)
Enoch Arden (No Comments »)
Fatima (No Comments »)
Gareth And Lynette (No Comments »)
Geraint And Enid (No Comments »)
Guinevere (No Comments »)
Hendecasyllabics (No Comments »)
Home They Brought Her Warrior Dead (No Comments »)
How Thought You That This Thing Could Captivate? (No Comments »)
Idylls Of The King: Song From The Marriage Of Geraint (No Comments »)
Idylls of the King: The Last Tournament (excerpt) (No Comments »)
Idylls of the King: The Marriage of Geraint (Fortune, Turn (No Comments »)
Idylls of the King: The Passing of Arthur (excerpt) (No Comments »)
In Memoriam 131: O Living Will That Shalt Endure (No Comments »)
In Memoriam 16: I envy not in any moods (No Comments »)
In Memoriam 3: O Sorrow, Cruel Fellowship (No Comments »)
In Memoriam 82: I Wage Not Any Feud With Death (No Comments »)
In Memoriam A. H. H. (No Comments »)
In Memoriam A. H. H. Obiit MDCCCXXXIII: 3. O Sorrow, cruel (No Comments »)
In Memoriam A. H. H. Obiit MDCCCXXXIII: 30. With trembling (No Comments »)
In Memoriam A. H. H. Obiit: 124. That which we dare invoke (No Comments »)
In Memoriam A. H. H.: 105. To-night ungather’d let us leave (No Comments »)
In Memoriam A. H. H.: 11. Calm is the morn without a sound (No Comments »)
In Memoriam A. H. H.: 118. Contemplate all this work of Tim (No Comments »)
In Memoriam A. H. H.: 121. Sad Hesper o’er the buried sun (No Comments »)
In Memoriam A. H. H.: 126. Love is and was my Lord and King (No Comments »)
In Memoriam A. H. H.: 131. O living will that shalt endure (No Comments »)
In Memoriam A. H. H.: 15. To-night the winds begin to rise (No Comments »)
In Memoriam A. H. H.: 16. I Envy not in any Moods (No Comments »)
In Memoriam A. H. H.: 2. Old Yew, which graspest at the sto (No Comments »)
In Memoriam A. H. H.: 22. The path by which we twain did go (No Comments »)
In Memoriam A. H. H.: 39. Old warder of these buried bones (No Comments »)
In Memoriam A. H. H.: 44. How fares it with the happy dead? (No Comments »)
In Memoriam A. H. H.: 45. The baby new to earth and sky (No Comments »)
In Memoriam A. H. H.: 5. Sometimes I Hold it half a Sin (No Comments »)
In Memoriam A. H. H.: 54. Oh, yet we Trust that somehow Goo (No Comments »)
In Memoriam A. H. H.: 55. The wish, that of the living whol (No Comments »)
In Memoriam A. H. H.: 6. One writes, that Other Friends Rem (No Comments »)
In Memoriam A. H. H.: 67. When on my bed the moonlight fall (No Comments »)
In Memoriam A. H. H.: 7. Dark house, by which once more I s (No Comments »)
In Memoriam A. H. H.: 72. Risest thou thus, dim dawn, again (No Comments »)
In Memoriam A. H. H.: 78. Again at Christmas did we weave (No Comments »)
In Memoriam A. H. H.: 82. I wage not any feud with death (No Comments »)
In Memoriam A. H. H.: 83. Dip down upon the northern shore (No Comments »)
In Memoriam A. H. H.: 95. By night we linger’d on the lawn (No Comments »)
In Memoriam A. H. H.: 96. You say, but with no touch of sco (No Comments »)
In Memoriam A. H. H.: 99. Risest thou thus, dim dawn, again (No Comments »)
In Memoriam A. H. H.: Is it, then, regret for buried time (No Comments »)
In Memoriam A. H. H.: The Prelude (No Comments »)
In Memoriam A. HIn Memoriam A. H. H.: 56. So careful of the type? but no.: 55. The wish, that of the living whol (No Comments »)
In the Valley of Cauteretz (No Comments »)
Lady Clare (No Comments »)
Lancelot And Elaine (No Comments »)
Late, Late, So Late (No Comments »)
Lilian (No Comments »)
Locksley Hall (No Comments »)
Lucretius (No Comments »)
Mariana (No Comments »)
Mariana In The South (No Comments »)
Maud: A Monodrama (Part I, excerpt) (No Comments »)
Maud: A Monodrama (Part II, excerpt) (No Comments »)
Milton (Alcaics) (No Comments »)
Minnie and Winnie (No Comments »)
Morte D’Arthur (No Comments »)
Move Eastward, Happy Earth (No Comments »)
Northern Farmer: New Style (No Comments »)
Northern Farmer: Old Style (No Comments »)
Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal (No Comments »)
O Beauty, Passing Beauty! (No Comments »)
O, Were I Loved As I Desire To Be! (No Comments »)
Of Old Sat Freedom (No Comments »)
Of Old Sat Freedom on the Heights (No Comments »)
Pelleas And Ettarre (No Comments »)
Princess: A Medley: The splendour falls on castle walls (No Comments »)
Recollection of the Arabian Nights (No Comments »)
Requiescat (No Comments »)
Ring Out, Wild Bells (No Comments »)
Sea Dreams (No Comments »)
Sir Galahad (No Comments »)
Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere (No Comments »)
Spring (No Comments »)
St. Agnes’ Eve (No Comments »)
Sweet And Low (No Comments »)
Tears, Idle Tears (No Comments »)
The Brook (No Comments »)
The Charge Of The Light Brigade (No Comments »)
The Coming Of Arthur (No Comments »)
The Deserted House (No Comments »)
The Eagle (No Comments »)
The Flower (No Comments »)
The Garden (No Comments »)
The Grandmother (No Comments »)
The Higher Pantheism (No Comments »)
The Holy Grail (No Comments »)
The Last Tournament (No Comments »)
The Letters (No Comments »)
The Lord of Burleigh (No Comments »)
The Lotos-eaters (No Comments »)
The Marriage Of Geraint (No Comments »)
The Mermaid (No Comments »)
The Merman (No Comments »)
The Miller’s Daughter (No Comments »)
The Oak (No Comments »)
The Owl (No Comments »)
The Palace of Art (No Comments »)
The Passing Of Arthur (No Comments »)
The Princess (part 1) (No Comments »)
The Princess (part 2) (No Comments »)
The Princess (part 3) (No Comments »)
The Princess (part 4) (No Comments »)
The Princess (part 5) (No Comments »)
The Princess (part 6) (No Comments »)
The Princess (part 7) (No Comments »)
The Princess (prologue) (No Comments »)
The Princess (The Conclusion) (No Comments »)
The Princess: A Medley: As thro’ the land (No Comments »)
The Princess: A Medley: Ask me no more (No Comments »)
The Princess: A Medley: Come down, O Maid (No Comments »)
The Princess: A Medley: Home they Brought her Warrior Dead (No Comments »)
The Princess: A Medley: Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal (No Comments »)
The Princess: A Medley: O Swallow (No Comments »)
The Princess: A Medley: Our Enemies have Fall’n (No Comments »)
The Princess: A Medley: Tears, Idle Tears (No Comments »)
The Princess: A Medley: Thy Voice is Heard (No Comments »)
The Progress of Spring (No Comments »)
The Revenge – A Ballad of the Fleet (No Comments »)
The Ringlet (No Comments »)
The Skipping-Rope (No Comments »)
The Talking Oak (No Comments »)
Tithonus (No Comments »)
To E. Fitzgerald: Tiresias (No Comments »)
To J. S. (No Comments »)
To The Queen (No Comments »)
To Virgil (No Comments »)
To Virgil, Written at the Request of the Mantuans for the N (No Comments »)
Ulysses (No Comments »)
You Ask Me, Why, Tho’ Ill at Ease (No Comments »)

Poems

Break, Break, Break (No Comments »)
Crossing The Bar (No Comments »)
Demeter And Persephone (No Comments »)
The Lady Of Shalott (No Comments »)