Early life Alfred Tennyson was born on 6 August 1809 in
Somersby, Lincolnshire, England. He was born into a successful middle-class family of minor landowning status distantly descended from
John Savage, 2nd Earl Rivers, and
Francis Leke, 1st Earl of Scarsdale. showing Somersby Rectory, where Tennyson was raised and began writing His father, George Clayton Tennyson, was an
Anglican clergyman who served as
rector of Somersby (1807–1831), also rector of
Benniworth (1802–1831) and
Bag Enderby, and
vicar of
Grimsby (1815). He raised a large family and "was a man of superior abilities and varied attainments, who tried his hand with fair success in architecture, painting, music, and poetry. He was comfortably well off for a country clergyman, and his shrewd money management enabled the family to spend summers at
Mablethorpe and
Skegness on the eastern coast of England". George Clayton Tennyson was the elder son of the attorney and
member of Parliament George Tennyson,
JP,
DL, of
Bayons Manor and
Usselby Hall, who had also inherited the estates of his mother's family, the Claytons, and married Mary, daughter and heiress of John Turner, of
Caistor, Lincolnshire. George Clayton Tennyson was however pushed into a career in the church and passed over as heir in favour of his younger brother
Charles. Tennyson and two of his elder brothers were writing poetry in their teens, and a collection of poems by all three was published locally when Alfred was 17. One of those brothers,
Charles Tennyson Turner, later married Louisa Sellwood, the younger sister of Alfred's
future wife; the other was
Frederick Tennyson. Another of Tennyson's brothers, Edward Tennyson, was institutionalised at a private asylum. The psychologist
William James, in his book
The Varieties of Religious Experience, quoted Tennyson concerning a type of experience with which Tennyson was familiar: A kind of waking trance I have frequently had, quite up from boyhood, when I have been all alone. This has often come upon me through repeating my own name. All at once, as it were out of the intensity of the consciousness of individuality, individuality itself seemed to dissolve and fade away into boundless being, and this was not a confused state but the clearest, the surest of the sure, utterly beyond words…
Education and first publication Tennyson was a student of
King Edward VI Grammar School, Louth, from 1816 to 1820. He entered
Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1827, where he joined a
secret society called the
Cambridge Apostles. A portrait of Tennyson by
George Frederic Watts is in Trinity's collection. At Cambridge, he met
Arthur Hallam and
William Henry Brookfield, who became his closest friends. His first publication was a collection of "his boyish rhymes and those of his elder brother Charles" entitled
Poems by Two Brothers, published in 1827. Reportedly, "it was thought to be no slight honour for a young man of twenty to win the chancellor's gold medal". Tennyson and his family were allowed to stay in the rectory for some time, but later moved to Beech Hill Park,
High Beach, deep within
Epping Forest,
Essex, about 1837. Tennyson's son recalled: "there was a pond in the park on which in winter my father might be seen skating, sailing about on the ice in his long blue cloak. He liked the nearness of London, whither he resorted to see his friends, but he could not stay in town even for a night, his mother being in such a nervous state that he did not like to leave her...". An unwise investment in Dr Allen's ecclesiastical wood-carving enterprise soon led to the loss of much of the family fortune, and led to a bout of serious depression. The pair began a lifelong friendship, and were famous smoking companions. Some of Tennyson's work even bears the influence of Carlyle and his ideas. Tennyson moved to London in 1840 and lived for a time at
Chapel House, Twickenham.
Third publication On 14 May 1842, while living modestly in London, Tennyson published the two-volume
Poems, of which the first included works already published and the second was made up almost entirely of new poems. They met with immediate success; poems from this collection, such as "
Locksley Hall", "
Break, Break, Break", and "
Ulysses", and a new version of "
The Lady of Shalott", have met enduring fame. "
The Princess: A Medley", a satire on women's education that came out in 1847, was also popular for its lyrics.
W. S. Gilbert later adapted and parodied the piece twice: in
The Princess (1870) and in
Princess Ida (1884). It was in 1850 that Tennyson reached the pinnacle of his career, finally publishing his masterpiece,
In Memoriam A.H.H., dedicated to Hallam. Later the same year, he was appointed
Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, succeeding
William Wordsworth. In the same year (on 13 June), Tennyson married
Emily Sellwood, whom he had known since childhood, in the village of
Shiplake. They had two sons,
Hallam Tennyson (b. 11 August 1852)—named after his friend—and Lionel (b. 16 March 1854). Tennyson rented
Farringford House on the
Isle of Wight in 1853, eventually buying it in 1856. He eventually found that there were too many
starstruck tourists who pestered him in Farringford, so he moved to
Aldworth, in
West Sussex in 1869. However, he retained Farringford and regularly returned there to spend the winters. File:Break-break-break-reickemeyer.jpg|
Break, Break, Break, on thy cold grey Stones, o Sea, a photograph by
Rudolf Eickemeyer Jr. The title is a quote from the 1842
poem. File:Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson and family.jpg|Tennyson with his wife
Emily (1813–1896) and his sons
Hallam (1852–1928) and Lionel (1854–1886) File:Farringford - Lord Tennyson's residence - c1910 - Project Gutenberg eText 17296.jpg|
Farringford, Tennyson's residence on the Isle of Wight File:Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson by George Frederic Watts.jpg|
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson, by
George Frederic Watts (1817–1904)
Poet Laureate '', 22 July 1871 In 1850, after Wordsworth's death and
Samuel Rogers' refusal, Tennyson was appointed Poet Laureate;
Elizabeth Barrett Browning and
Leigh Hunt had also been considered. He held the position until his death in 1892, the longest tenure of any laureate. Tennyson fulfilled the requirements of this position, such as by authoring a poem of greeting to
Princess Alexandra of Denmark when she arrived in Britain to marry the future King
Edward VII. In 1855, Tennyson produced one of his best-known works, "
The Charge of the Light Brigade", a dramatic tribute to the British cavalrymen involved in
an ill-advised charge on 25 October 1854, during the
Crimean War. Other works written in the post of Poet Laureate include "Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington" and "Ode Sung at the Opening of the International Exhibition". Tennyson declined a
baronetcy offered him by
Benjamin Disraeli in 1865 and 1868, finally accepting a
peerage in 1883 at
William Ewart Gladstone's earnest solicitation. In 1884
Queen Victoria created him
Baron Tennyson, of Aldworth in the County of Sussex and of
Freshwater in the Isle of Wight. He took his seat in the
House of Lords on 11 March 1884. Tennyson believed that society should progress through gradual and steady reform, not revolution, and this attitude was reflected in his attitude toward universal suffrage, which he did not outright reject, but recommended only after the masses had been properly educated and adjusted to self-government. at
Farringford House, his home in the village of
Freshwater, Isle of Wight. Towards the end of his life Tennyson revealed that his "religious beliefs also defied convention, leaning towards agnosticism and
pandeism": In a characteristically Victorian manner, Tennyson combines a deep interest in contemporary science with an unorthodox, even idiosyncratic, Christian belief. He wrote in
In Memoriam: "There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds." In
Maud, 1855, he wrote: "The churches have killed their Christ". In "
Locksley Hall Sixty Years After", Tennyson wrote: "Christian love among the churches look'd the twin of heathen hate." In his play
Becket, he wrote: "We are self-uncertain creatures, and we may, Yea, even when we know not, mix our spites and private hates with our defence of Heaven". Tennyson recorded in his
Diary (p. 127): "I believe in
Pantheism of a sort". His son's biography confirms that Tennyson was an unorthodox Christian, noting that Tennyson praised
Giordano Bruno and
Baruch Spinoza on his deathbed, saying of Bruno, "His view of God is in some ways mine", in 1892. , Isle of Wight Tennyson continued writing into his eighties. He died on 6 October 1892 at Aldworth, aged 83. He was buried at
Westminster Abbey. A memorial was erected in
All Saints' Church, Freshwater. His last words were, "Oh that press will have me now!". He left an estate of £57,206.
Tennyson Down and the
Tennyson Trail on the Isle of Wight are named after him, and a monument to him stands on top of Tennyson Down.
Lake Tennyson in New Zealand's high country, named by
Frederick Weld, is assumed to be named after Tennyson. He was succeeded as 2nd Baron Tennyson by his son
Hallam, who produced an authorised biography of his father in 1897, and was later the second
Governor-General of Australia. ==Tennyson and the Queen==