Tennyson, Alfred, first Baron Tennyson

Tennyson, Alfred, first Baron Tennyson (1809–92), was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he joined the Apostles and became acquainted with A. H. Hallam. In 1829 he won the chancellor's medal for English verse with ‘Timbuctoo’, Poems by Two Brothers (1827) contains some early work as well as poems by his brothers Charles and Frederick (below). Poems, Chiefly Lyrical (1830, including ‘Mariana’) was unfavourably reviewed by Lockhart and John Wilson. In 1832 he travelled with Hallam on the Continent. Hallam died abroad in 1833, and in that year Tennyson began In Memoriam, expressive of his grief for his lost friend.

He became engaged to Emily Sellwood, to whom, however, he was not married until 1850. In Dec. 1832 he published a further volume of Poems (dated 1833), which included ‘The Two Voices’, ‘Oenone’, ‘The Lotos-Eaters’, and ‘A Dream of Fair Women’; ‘Tithonus’ (1860) was composed 1833–4. In 1842 appeared a selection from the previous two volumes, many of the poems much revised, with new poems, including ‘Morte d'Arthur’ (the germ of the Idylls), ‘Locksley Hall’, ‘Ulysses’, and ‘St Simeon Stylites’. In 1847 he published The Princess and in 1850 In Memoriam, and in the latter year he was appointed poet laureate in succession to Wordsworth. He wrote his ‘Ode’ on the death of Wellington in 1852 (see ode) and ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ in 1854, having at this time settled in Farringford on the Isle of Wight.

Tennyson's fame was by now firmly established, and Maud, and Other Poems (1855, see Maud) and the first four Idylls of the King (1859) sold extremely well. Among the many friends and admirers who visited Farringford were E. Fitzgerald, Lear, Patmore, Clough, F. T. Palgrave, and Allingham. Prince Albert called in 1856, but Queen Victoria never visited him, preferring to summon him to Osborne or Windsor. Enoch Arden Etc. (see Enoch Arden) appeared in 1864. The Holy Grail and Other Poems (including ‘Lucretius’) in 1869 (dated 1870), ‘The Last Tournament’ in the Contemporary Review in 1871, and Gareth and Lynette, etc. in 1872. His dramas Queen Mary and Harold were published in 1875 and 1876, and The Falcon, The Cup, and Becket in 1884, in which year he was made a peer. In 1880 appeared Ballads and Other Poems, including ‘The Voyage of Maeldune’, ‘Rizpah’, and ‘The Revenge’. He published Tiresias, and Other Poems (see Tiresias) in 1885, and The Foresters appeared in 1892. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, and a life by his son Hallam appeared in 1897.

In his later years there were already signs that the admiration Tennyson had long enjoyed was beginning to wane. Critical opinion has tended to endorse Auden's view that ‘his genius was lyrical’, and that he had little talent for the narrative, epic, and dramatic forms to which he devoted such labour. More recently there has been a revival of interest in some of the longer poems, e.g. ‘Locksley Hall’, The Princess, and ‘Enoch Arden’.