1.English author often regarded as the chief representative of the Victorian age in poetry.

Tennyson succeeded William Wordsworth as Poet Laureate in 1850; he was appointed by Queen
Victoria and served 42 years. Tennyson's works were melancholic, and reflected the moral and
intellectual values of his time, which has made them especially vulnerable for later critic.

"Now folds the lily all her sweetness up,

And slips into the bosom of the lake.
So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip
Into my bosom and be lost in me."
(from 'The Princess')

Alfred, Lord Tennyson was born in Somersby, Lincolnshire, the fourth of twelve children. His
father, George Clayton Tennyson, was a clergyman and rector, who was notoriously
absentminded and suffered from depression. His dark moods often overshadowed the family.
Alfred began to write poetry at an early age in the style of Lord Byron. His first drama in blank
verse Tennyson wrote at fourteen. After four unhappy school years at Louth, where he was
bullied by his big boys and masters, he was tutored at home. Tennyson then studied at Trinity
College, Cambridge, but he did not aim at academic excellence. He joined the literary club 'The
Apostles', where he met Arthur Hallam who became his closest friend. The undergraduate
society discussed contemporary social, religious, scientific, and literary issues. Encouraged by
'The Apostles', Tennyson published POEMS, CHIEFLY LYRICAL (1830), which included the
popular 'Mariana'. He travelled with Hallam on the Continent. By 1830, Hallam had become
engaged to Tennyson's sister Emily. After his father's death in 1831 Tennyson returned to
Somersby without a degree.

Tennyson's next book, POEMS (1833), received unfavorable reviews, and he 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 'Im Memorian' for his lost friend – the work took seventeen years
to finish. A revised volume of Poems, which included the 'The Lady of Shalott' and 'The Lotus-
eaters'. 'Morte d'Arthur' and 'Ulysses' appeared in the two-volume POEMS (1842), and
established his reputation as a writer. In 'Ulysses Tennyson portrayed the Greek after his travels,
longing past days: "How dull it is to pause, to make an end, / To rust unburnished, not to shine in
use!"

After marrying in 1850 During his later years Tennyson produced some of his best poems.,
whom Tennyson had already met in 1830 and who had been the object of his affection for a long
time, the couple settled in 1853 in Farringford, a house in Freshwater on the Isle of Wright. From
there the family moved in 1869 to Aldworth, Surrey. Tennyson's life was then uneventful. In
London he was a regular guest of the literary and artistic salon of Mrs Prinsep at Little Holland
House. Tennyson's mother died in 1865. On the funeral day he wrote in his diary: "We all of us
hate the pompous funeral we have to join in, black plumes, black coaches and nonsense. We
should like all to go in white and gold rather, but convention is against us."

Among Tennyson's major poetic achievements the elegy mourning the death of his friend Arthur
Hallam, In Memoriam (1850). The personal sorrow led the poet to explore his thoughts on faith,
immortality, and the meaning of loss: "O life as futile, then, as frail! / O for thy voice to soothe
and bless! / What hope of answer, or redress? / Behind the veil, behind the veil." Among its other
passages is a symbolic voyage ending in a vision of Hallam as the poet's muse. Some critics have
seen in the work ideas, that anticipated Darwin's theory of natural selection. "Who trusted God
was love indeed / And love Creation's final law – / Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw / With
ravine, shriek'd against his creed – ", Tennyson wrote. He was born in the same year as Darwin,
but his view about natural history, however, was based on catastrophe theory, not evolution.

"Into the jaws of death,

Into the mouth of hell
Rode the six hundred."
(from 'The Charge of the Light Brigade')

The patriotic 'Charge of the Light Brigade' was first published in The Examiner, on December 9,
1954 and included MAUD (1855). Although at first Maud was found obscure or morbid by
critics ranging from George Eliot to Gladstone, 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' became one of
Tennyson's best known works. Later the poem also inspired Michael Curtiz's film from 1936,
starring Errol Flynn. Historically the fight during the Crimean war brough to light the
incompetent organization of the English army. However, the stupid mistake described in work
honored the soldier's courage and heroic action.

During his later years Tennyson produced some of his best verse. ENOCH ARDEN (1864) was
based on a true story of a sailor, thought to be drowned at sea but who returned home after
several years obly to find that his wife had remarried. In the poem Enoch Arden, Philip Ray and
Annie Lee grow up together. Enoch wins her hand. He sails abroad and is shipwrecked for 10
years on a deserted island. Meanwhile Annie has been reduced to poverty. Philip asks her to
marry him. Enoch returns and witnesses their happiness, but hides that he is alive and sacrifices
his happiness for theirs. An Enoch Arden has come to mean a person who truly loves someone
better than himself. The poem ends simply with the lines, "So past the strong heoic soul away. /
And when they buried him, the little port / Had seldom seen a costlier funeral." IDYLLS OF
THE KING (1859-1885) dealt with the Arthurian legeds, which had fascinated Tennyson since
his youth, and THE ANCIENT SAGE (1885) and AKBAR'S DREAM (1892) testified the poet's
faith in the redemption offered by love. Despite Tennyson pessimism about the human condition,
he believed in God.

In the 1870s Tennyson wrote several plays, among them 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. Soon he became the favorite
target of attacks of many English and American poets who saw him as a representative of narrow
patriotism and sentimentality. Later critics have praised again Tennyson. T.S. Eliot has called
him "the great master of metric as well as of melancholia" and that he possessed the finest ear of
any English poet since Milton.
2………………

Alfred Tennyson was born August 6th, 1809, at Somersby,

Lincolnshire, fourth of twelve children of George and Elizabeth (Fytche) Tennyson. The poet's
grandfather had violated tradition by making his younger son, Charles, his heir, and arranging for
the poet's father to enter the ministry. (See the Tennyson Family Tree.) The contrast of his own
family's relatively straitened circumstances to the great wealth of his aunt Elizabeth Russell and
uncle Charles Tennyson (who lived in castles!) made Tennyson feel particularly impoverished
and led him to worry about money all his life.

He also had a lifelong fear of mental illness, for several men in his family had a mild form of
epilepsy, which was then thought a shameful disease. His father and brother Arthur made their
cases worse by excessive drinking. His brother Edward had to be confined in a mental institution
after 1833, and he himself spent a few weeks under doctors' care in 1843. In the late twenties his
father's physical and mental condition worsened, and he became paranoid, abusive, and violent.

In 1827 Tennyson escaped the troubled atmosphere of his home when he followed his two older
brothers to Trinity College, Cambridge, where his tutor was William Whewell — see nineteenth-
century philosophy. Because they had published Poems by Two Brothers in 1827 and each won
university prizes for poetry (Alfred winning the Chancellor's Gold Medal in 1828 for
ÒTimbuctooÓ) the Tennyson brothers became well known at Cambridge. In 1829 The Apostles,
an undergraduate club, whose members remained Tennyson's friends all his life, invited him to
join. The group, which met to discuss major philosophical and other issues, included Arthur
Henry Hallam, James Spedding, Edward Lushington (who later married Cecilia Tennyson), and
Richard Monckton Milnes — all eventually famous men who merited entries in the Dictionary of
National Biography.
Arthur Hallam's was the most important of these friendships. Hallam, another precociously
brilliant Victorian young man like Robert Browning, John Stuart Mill, and Matthew Arnold, was
uniformly recognized by his contemporaries (including William Gladstone, his best friend at
Eton) as having unusual promise. He and Tennyson knew each other only four years, but their
intense friendship had major influence on the poet. On a visit to Somersby, Hallam met and later
became engaged to Emily Tennyson, and the two friends looked forward to a life-long
companionship. Hallam's death from illness in 1833 (he was only 22) shocked Tennyson
profoundly, and his grief lead to most of his best poetry, including In Memoriam , "The Passing
of Arthur", "Ulysses," and "Tithonus."

Since Tennyson was always sensitive to criticism, the mixed reception of his 1832 Poems hurt
him greatly. Critics in those days delighted in the harshness of their reviews: the Quarterly
Review was known as the "Hang, draw, and quarterly." John Wilson Croker's harsh criticisms of
some of the poems in our anthology kept Tennyson from publishing again for another nine years.

Late in the 1830s Tennyson grew concerned about his mental health and visited a sanitarium run
by Dr. Matthew Allen, with whom he later invested his inheritance (his grandfather had died in
1835) and some of his family's money. When Dr. Allen's scheme for mass-producing wood
carvings using steam power went bankrupt, Tennyson, who did not have enough money to
marry, ended his engagement to Emily Sellwood, whom he had met at his brother Charles's
wedding to her sister Louisa.

The success of his 1842 Poems made Tennyson a popular poet, and in 1845 he received a Civil
List (government) pension of £200 a year, which helped relieve his financial difficulties; the
success of "The Princess" and In Memoriam and his appointment in 1850 as Poet Laureate
finally established him as the most popular poet of the Victorian era.

By now Tennyson, only 41, had written some of his greatest poetry, but he continued to write
and to gain in popularity. In 1853, as the Tennysons were moving into their new house on the
Isle of Wight, Prince Albert dropped in unannounced. His admiration for Tennyson's poetry
helped solidify his position as the national poet, and Tennyson returned the favor by dedicating
The Idylls of the King to his memory. Queen Victoria later summoned him to court several
times, and at her insistence he accepted his title, having declined it when offered by both Disraeli
and Gladstone.

Tennyson suffered from extreme short-sightedness — without a monocle he could not even see
to eat — which gave him considerable difficulty writing and reading, and this disability in part
accounts for his manner of creating poetry: Tennyson composed much of his poetry in his head,
occasionally working on individual poems for many years. During his undergraduate days at
Cambridge he often did not bother to write down his compositions, although the Apostles
continually prodded him to do so. (We owe the first version of "The Lotos-Eaters" to Arthur
Hallam, who transcribed it while Tennyson declaimed it at a meeting of the Apostles.)

Long-lived like most of his family (no matter how unhealthy they seemed to be) Alfred, Lord
Tennyson died on October 6, 1892, at the age of 83.
Tennyson quotes:

A day may sink or save a realm.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

A lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

A smile abroad is often a scowl at home.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

A sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier times.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

All experience is an arch wherethrough gleams that untravelled world whose margin fades for
ever and for ever when I move.
Alfred Lord Tennyson

And out of darkness came the hands that reach thro' nature, moulding men.
Alfred Lord Tennyson

Authority forgets a dying king.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Believe me, than in half the creeds.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Better not be at all than not be noble.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

By blood a king, in heart a clown.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams?
Alfred Lord Tennyson

God's finger touched him, and he slept.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Guard your roving thoughts with a jealous care, for speech is but the dialer of thoughts, and
every fool can plainly read in your words what is the hour of your thoughts.
Alfred Lord Tennyson

He makes no friends who never made a foe.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

I am a part of all that I have seen.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

I must lose myself in action, lest I wither in despair.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

I the heir of all the ages, in the foremost files of time.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

In the long years liker they must grow; The man be more of woman, she of man.
Alfred Lord Tennyson

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change.
Alfred Lord Tennyson