Alfred, Lord Tennyson

I

Introduction

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892), English poet, one of the great representative figures of the Victorian Age. His writing encompasses many poetic styles and includes some of the finest idyllic poetry in the language.

Alfred Tennyson was born in Somersby, Lincolnshire, on August 6, 1809. His initial education was conducted largely by his clergyman father, Dr. George Clayton Tennyson. The boy showed an early interest and talent in poetic composition, working original poems in a variety of meters and also successfully imitating the style of such famous poets as Lord Byron, whom he greatly admired. By the time he was 15, Tennyson had produced several blank-verse plays and an epic. Some of his boyhood poetry was published in collaboration with his brother Charles in Poems by Two Brothers (1827).

II

Poetic Development

In 1827 Tennyson entered Trinity College, University of Cambridge. While there he wrote a spirited blank-verse poem, Timbuctoo (1829), for which he received a prize, and published his first book on his own, Poems, Chiefly Lyrical (1830), which includes “Mariana”. In the summer of 1830, with his close friend Arthur Hallam, he joined a Spanish revolutionary army, but participated in no military engagements.

In 1831, following the death of his father, Tennyson left Cambridge without taking a degree. His second volume, Poems (1832), contains such familiar lyrics as “The Lady of Shalott,” “Oenone,” “The Palace of Art,” “The Lotos-Eaters,” and “A Dream of Fair Women,” but was severely criticized by the reviewers. The sudden death of his friend Hallam in 1833 produced in Tennyson a profound spiritual depression, and he vowed to refrain from issuing any more of his verse for a period of ten years. During this time he devoted himself to reading and meditation. While refusing to publish, he did continue to write, producing, for example, The Two Voices (1834), a philosophical poem on death and immortality.

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In 1842, at the expiration of his self-imposed period of silence, Tennyson won wide acclaim with the publication of his two-volume Poems. This collection, containing such works as “Morte d'Arthur,” an idyll based on Arthurian legend; “Locksley Hall”; “Ulysses”; and the poignant lyric “Break, Break, Break,” firmly established Tennyson's position as the foremost poet of his day.

III

Mature Works

Tennyson's first long poem after gaining literary recognition was The Princess (1847), a romantic treatment in musical blank verse of the question of women's rights. In 1850 appeared one of his greatest poems, In Memoriam, a tribute to the memory of Arthur Hallam. Although the loose organization of this series of lyrics, written over a period of 17 years, and the intensely personal character of the poem perplexed many of the readers of Tennyson's day, In Memoriam has since taken its place as one of the great elegies in English literature.

In 1850 Tennyson married Emily Sarah Sellwood, whom he had been waiting to marry since 1836. Enormously popular, he was appointed poet laureate of Britain the same year, succeeding William Wordsworth in this honor. He settled with his bride at Twickenham near London, three years later moving to his estate, Farringford, near Freshwater on the Isle of Wight. There he resided for at least a part of each year for the remainder of his life. In 1854 “The Charge of the Light Brigade” appeared; it was written, as one of the duties of his laureateship, to celebrate a memorable action by a British cavalry unit in the Crimean War. In the following year Maud, and Other Poems was published.

With the composition of Idylls of the King (begun in 1859 and completed in 1885) Tennyson returned to the subject of the Arthurian cycle. He dealt with the ancient legends in an episodic rather than a continuous narrative structure, the result being a loosely strung series of metrical romances. Rich in medieval pageantry and vivid, noble characterization, the poems contain some of Tennyson's best writing.

Among the poet's other works are the moving narrative of love and self-sacrifice Enoch Arden (1864); the historical dramas Queen Mary (1875), Harold (1876), and Becket (1884); Ballads and Other Poems (1880); Tiresias and Other Poems (1885); Demeter and Other Poems (1889); and The Death of Oenone and Other Poems (published posthumously, 1892). Tennyson was made a peer in 1884, taking his seat in the House of Lords as 1^st Baron Tennyson of Freshwater and Aldworth. He died at Aldworth House, Hazlemere, Surrey, on October 6, 1892.

IV

Literary Importance

Few poets have produced acknowledged masterpieces in so many different poetic genres as Tennyson; he furnished perhaps the most notable example in English letters of the eclectic style. His consummately crafted verse expresses in readily comprehensible terms the Victorian feeling for order and harmony.

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