Alfred Lord Tennyson
(1809–1892)

Alfred Lord Tennyson, while still in college, was viewed as destined to become the greatest poet of the century. During his lifetime he was as famous as any film or rock star is today. Poet laureate of England for nearly half of the nineteenth century, Tennyson "was the voice and sometimes … the conscience" of his age. Today he is considered one of the greatest English poets, admired for both his control of language and his ability to evoke a sense of longing and loss.

Tennyson was born on August 6, 1809, in Somersby, Lincolnshire. His father, George, was a bitter, unstable man who took out his unhappiness on his wife and 11 children. Since his father had disinherited George, he was forced to become a minister, which added to his discontent.

George was devoted to his children, though, particularly to their education. He instilled a love of classical literature in his son, encouraged Alfred's talents as a poet, and tutored Alfred at home. By the age of 15, Tennyson had composed verse in the style of Alexander Pope, John Milton, and Sir Walter Scott. At 17, he and his older brothers published Poems by Two Brothers (1827), actually written by three Tennyson brothers.

That year, Tennyson entered Cambridge University and soon attracted a circle of admirers. His poem "Timbuctoo" won the Chancellor's Medal in the spring of 1829. That spring he also made the most important friend of his life: Arthur Hallam, who later became engaged to Tennyson's sister Emily. In the fall of 1829, the two friends were invited to join an elite intellectual student club, the Apostles. Hallam, in particular, encouraged him as a poet, and in June 1830, Tennyson's Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, which included "The Kraken" and "Mariana," was published.

In early 1831, Tennyson was forced to leave Cambridge after his father died. He returned home and, in 1832, Poems, which included "The Lady of Shalott," "The Lotos-Eaters," and "The Palace of Art" was published. The reviews were harsh.

In the fall of 1833, while Hallam was traveling in Europe, he died suddenly of a brain hemorrhage. Tennyson was devastated. For the next nine years, he refused to publish–although he poured his grief into such poems as "Ulysses," "Tithonus," "Break, Break, Break," and "Morte d'Arthur."

In 1836, Tennyson became romantically involved with Emily Sellwood. They were engaged the following year but broke it off in 1840, possibly because Tennyson feared he had inherited his father's mental instability and epilepsy.

In 1842, Tennyson finally ended his so-called "Years of Silence" with Poems, a two-volume collection that catapulted him to fame. After several years of depression, Tennyson published his first long work, "The Princess," in 1847. This narrative poem examines a serious social issue: the proper role of women. Today the poem is appreciated mainly for the beautiful lyric songs embedded within the story, such as "Tears, Idle Tears," "Come Down, O Maid," and "The Splendor Falls."

In 1849, Tennyson resumed contact with Emily Sellwood, and they married in 1850, two weeks after the publication of "In Memorium." In this vast poem, Tennyson collected the elegies for Hallam that he had written over the years and arranged them into "a spiritual biography," moving from abject grief to a "happy sense of God's purpose." The poem established Tennyson as the greatest living poet. That year Queen Victoria invited him to become the nation's poet laureate.

Soon Tennyson had two sons, a big house on the Isle of Wight, and a new sense of stability. Yet his next work, Maud (1855), was a strange poem whose themes of violence and insanity shocked many readers. In 1859, Tennyson regained his popularity with "Idylls of the King," the first four of a series of 12 poems about King Arthur that he completed in 1888. Tennyson considered the story of Arthur "the greatest of all poetic subjects," symbolizing his own society's moral decay. His next major work, Enoch Arden (1864), made Tennyson rich, and so famous that his once-secluded house had become a tourist attraction.

In 1883, Tennyson reluctantly accepted a peerage, making him the first poet ever to be made a noble. Tennyson continued to write and publish poems, including his famous "Crossing the Bar" (1889), until he died in 1892, at the age of 83.

The Victorian age in England (1837–1901) was a period of tremendous technological, economic, political, and social change, from the development of the railroad to the expansion of democracy. It was also a period of intense scientific inquiry and upheaval. Works like Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology (1830–1833), Robert Chambers's Vestiges of Creation (1844), John Herschel's Outlines of Astronomy (1849), and above all Charles Darwin's Origin of Species (1859) challenged established religious ideas.

Tennyson was keenly interested in science–particularly the question of science versus religion, one of the dominant themes of "In Memorium." He read widely in the scientific literature, befriended many prominent scientists, and in 1869, helped form the Metaphysical Society, a group of intellectuals.

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