Alfred Tennyson Biography and List of Works

English author often regarded as the chief representative of the Victorian age in poetry. Tennyson succeeded Wordsworth as Poet Laureate in 1850; he was appointed by Queen Victoria and served for 42 years. Tennyson's works are melancholic, and reflect the moral and intellectual values of his time.

"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. His father, George Clayton Tennyson, a clergyman and rector, suffered from depression and was notoriously absentminded. Alfred began to write poetry at an early age in the style of Lord Byron. After spending four unhappy years in school he was tutored at home. Tennyson then studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he joined the literary club 'The Apostles' and 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, in 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.

His next book, POEMS (1833), received unfavourable reviews, and Tennyson ceased to publish for nearly ten years. Hallam died suddenly in the same year in Vienna. It was a heavy blow to Tennyson. He began to write 'In Memorian' for his lost friend - the work took seventeen years. A revised volume of Poems, which includes the 'The Lady of Shalott' and 'The Lotus-eaters'. 'Morte d'Arthur' and 'Ulysses' appeared in 1842 in the two-volume POEMS, and established his reputation as a writer. In 'Ulysses Tennyson portrays the Greek hero after his travels, longing for the glory of days past: "How dull it is to pause, to make an end, / To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!"

After marrying Emily Sellwood, whom he had already met in 1836, the couple settled in Farringford, a house in Freshwater on the Isle of Wight in 1853. From there the family moved in 1869 to Aldworth, Surrey. In London he was a regular guest of the literary and artistic salon of Mrs Prinsep at Little Holland House. During these later years he produced some of his best poems.

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

Among Tennyson's major poetic achievements is 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 anticipate 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 - ", the poet wrote. He was born in the same year as Darwin, but his views concerning natural history were based on catastrophe theory, not evolution. The patriotic poem 'Charge of the Light Brigade', published in MAUD (1855), is one of Tennyson's best-known works, although at first critics ranging from George Eliot to Gladstone found Maud obscure or morbid. Later the poem about the Light Brigade inspired Michael Curtiz's film from 1936, starring Errol Flynn. Historically the fight during the Crimean war brought to light the incompetent organization of the English army. However, the stupid mistake described in the poem honoured the soldier's courage and heroic action.

ENOCH ARDEN (1864) is based on the true story of a sailor thought drowned at sea that returns home after several years 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 the fact that he is alive and sacrifices his happiness for theirs. An Enoch Arden has come to mean a person who truly loves someone more than himself. The poem ends banally: "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) deals with the Arthurian theme, and THE ANCIENT SAGE (1885) and AKBAR'S DREAM (1892) testifies to Tennyson's faith in the redemption offered by love. Despite his pessimism about the human condition, the poet believed in God.

In the 1870s Tennyson wrote several plays, among them the 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 favourite target of attack for many English and American poets who saw him as a representative of narrow patriotism and sentimentality. Later critics have again come to praise him. T.S. Eliot called him 'the great master of metric as well as of melancholia', declaring that he possessed the finest ear of any English poet since Milton.

For further reading: Tennyson: Aspects of His Life by Harold Nicholson (1923); Alfred Lord Tennyson: A Memoir by His Son by Hallam T. Tennyson. Hardcover (1940); Alfred Tennyson by Sir Charles Tennyson (1949); Tennyson by Jerome H. Buckley (1960); Tennyson Laureate by Valerie Pitt (1962); The Two Voices by Elton E. Smith (1964); Tennyson by C. Ricks (1972); Tennyson: The Unquiet Heart by R.B. Martin (1980); Tennyson and the Doom of Romanticism by Herbert F. Tucker. Hardcover (April 1988) Anglo-American Antiphony: The Late Romanticism of Tennyson and Emerson by Richard E. Brantley (994); Tennyson, ed. by Rebecca Stott (1996); Alfred Lord Tennyson: The Poet in an Age of Theory by W. David Shaw (1997); Tennyson and His Circle by Lynne Truss (1999); Alfred Tennyson by Andrew Lang (2001) - See also: John Keats

POEMS BY TWO BROTHERS, (1826)
IDYLLS OF THE KING, (1859)