41 Facts About Tennyson

Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson was an English poet.

Tennyson was the Poet Laureate during much of Queen Victoria's reign.

In 1829, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal at Cambridge for one of his first pieces, "Timbuktu".

Tennyson published his first solo collection of poems, Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, in 1830.

Tennyson's early poetry, with its medievalism and powerful visual imagery, was a major influence on the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

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Tennyson wrote some notable blank verse including Idylls of the King, "Ulysses", and "Tithonus".

Tennyson is the ninth most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations.

Tennyson was born on 6 August 1809 in Somersby, Lincolnshire, England.

Tennyson 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.

Tennyson's father, George Clayton Tennyson, was an Anglican clergyman who served as rector of Somersby, rector of Benniworth and Bag Enderby, and vicar of Grimsby .

George Clayton Tennyson was elder son of attorney and MP George Tennyson, JP, DL, of Bayons Manor and Usselby Hall, who had 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 d'Eyncourt.

Tennyson entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1827, where he joined a secret society called the Cambridge Apostles.

At Cambridge, Tennyson met Arthur Hallam and William Henry Brookfield, who became his closest friends.

Tennyson's first publication was a collection of "his boyish rhymes and those of his elder brother Charles" entitled Poems by Two Brothers, published in 1827.

In 1829, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal at Cambridge for one of his first pieces, "Timbuktu".

Tennyson published his first solo collection of poems, Poems Chiefly Lyrical in 1830.

Tennyson returned to the rectory, where he was permitted to live for another six years and shared responsibility for his widowed mother and the family.

In 1833 Tennyson published his second book of poetry, which notably included the first version of "The Lady of Shalott".

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.

Tennyson 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.

Tennyson befriended a Dr Allen, who ran a nearby asylum whose patients then included the poet John Clare.

Tennyson moved to London in 1840 and lived for a time at Chapel House, Twickenham.

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.

Tennyson rented Farringford House on the Isle of Wight in 1853, eventually buying it in 1856.

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Tennyson eventually found that there were too many starstruck tourists who pestered him in Farringford, so he moved to Aldworth, in West Sussex in 1869.

In 1850, after William Wordsworth's death and Samuel Rogers' refusal, Tennyson was appointed to the position of Poet Laureate; Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Leigh Hunt had been considered.

Tennyson held the position until his own 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.

Tennyson initially declined a baronetcy in 1865 and 1868, finally accepting a peerage in 1883 at Gladstone's earnest solicitation.

Tennyson took his seat in the House of Lords on 11 March 1884.

Tennyson's family were Whigs by tradition and Tennyson's own politics fitted the Whig mould, although he would vote for the Liberal Party after the Whigs dissolved.

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.

Towards the end of his life Tennyson revealed that his "religious beliefs 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.

Tennyson 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 was a craftsman who polished and revised his manuscripts extensively, to the point where his efforts at self-editing were described by his contemporary Robert Browning as "insane", symptomatic of "mental infirmity".

Tennyson reflects the Victorian period of his maturity in his feeling for order and his tendency towards moralising.

Tennyson reflects a concern common among Victorian writers in being troubled by the conflict between religious faith and expanding scientific knowledge.

Tennyson possessed a strong poetic power, which his early readers often attributed to his "Englishness" and his masculinity.

Tennyson's early poetry, with its medievalism and powerful visual imagery, was a major influence on the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.