{\b Alfred Lord Tennyson}.

{\b Date of Birth}.: 6 August 1809

{\b Date of Death}.: 6 October 1862

{\b Works}.

English poet and dramatist, generally considered to be the chief 
representative of the Victorian age in poetry. Tennyson's major works include 
his Poems. Chiefly Lyrical (1830); his two volume work, again entitled Poems, 
of 1842 which includes, alongside rewritten earlier works, the dramatic 
monologue 'Ulysses', 'Morte d'Arthur' and 'Sir Galahad' - his first pieces 
dealing with Arthurian legend, 'Locksley Hall' and 'Break, Break, Break'; the 
novella Princess: a Medly (1847) and his In Memorium A.H.H. (1850), a tribute 
to his deceased friend Arthur Hallam. 

Other major works, this time from Tennyson's second period of creative out put 
after being made poet laureate, include Ode on the Death of the Duke of 
Wellington (1852), The Charge of the Light Brigade (1854) and Maud (1855), 
what Tennyson referred to as his "monodrama".

He also wrote, in later years, a number of works centred on Arthurian legends, 
including The Idylls of the King (1859), The Holy Grail and Other Poems (1870) 
and Gareth and Lynette (1872), as well as some poetic dramas: Queen Mary 
(1875), Harold (1877), Becket (1884) and, his only prose work, The Promise of 
May (produced at the Globe Theatre in November 1882). Other important works 
are Despair (1881), Locksley Hall Sixty Years After (1886), Demeter and Other 
Poems (1889) and his famous Crossing the Bar (1889).

{\b Featured Works}.

'Tears, Idle Tears', 'Come Down, O Maid', 'To the Rev. F.D.Maurice', 'To 
Virgil', 'The Lady of Shalott', 'The Lotos-Eaters', 'Break, Break, Break', 
'The Charge of the Light Brigade', 'The Revenge: A Ballad of the Fleet', 
'Cradle Song', 'In the Valley of the Cauteretz', 'A Farewell', 
'After-Thought', 'Tithonus', 'The Deserted House', '"Flower in the Crannied 
Wall"', 'Wages', 'The Spiteful Letter', 'The Letters', 'St Simeon Stylites', 
'Audley Court', 'Northern Farmer. Old Style', 'Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal', 
'From in Memoriam A.H.H.', 'Northern Farmer. New Style', 'The Eagle', 
'Ulysses', 'Crossing the Bar', 'Morte D'Arthur', 'Blow, Bugle, Blow', 'Mariana'.

{\b General Comment}.

Tennyson, one of twelve children and later a first baron, was born in 
Somersby, Lincolnshire. From 1875 he attended Louth grammar school, followed, 
in 1827, by Trinity College, Cambridge where he made perhaps his greatest 
friendship ever with Arthur Hallam and joined the undergraduate club 'The 
Apostles'. Here, in 1829, Tennyson - having already published some poems, 
prior to 1827, anonymously in the ironically entitled Poems by Two Brothers 
(actually written by Alfred, Frederick and Charles) - won the Chancellor's 
Gold Medal for English with his poem 'Timbuctoo'.

In 1830 Tennyson and Hallam, along with other Apostle members, travelled to 
Spain to help in the failed revolution against Ferdinand VII, after which, in 
1831, the death of Tennyson's father and the discovery of his debts led, in 
part, to Tennyson's leaving Cambridge without taking his degree. By this time 
his Poems. Chiefly Lyrical (1830) had been published and Hallam had become 
engaged to Tennyson's sister Emily.

In 1833 the second volume entitled Poems was published, but in the same year  
Hallam came to a tragic end in Venice, caused by a ruptured blood vessel. 
After this it was to be seven years before Tennyson published again in 1842, 
during which time he met, fell in love with and became engaged to another 
Emily; Emily Sellwood, the sister of one of his brother's brides.

In 1845 Tennyson received a Civil List Pension of £200 per annum and this was 
followed by publication of The Princess (1847) and, in 1850, the volume In 
Memorium A.H.H.. Beginning to win fame for his three volumes of poetry from 
1830, 1832 and 1840, this year - 1850 - was to be a crucial one: Tennyson also 
married Emily Sellwood and, in November, was appointed poet laureate, 
successor to Wordsworth. This marked the beginning of his second major period 
of creativity from which came the works on the Duke of Wellington's death and 
the Charge of the Light Brigade as well as Maud (1855).

In 1884, by which time he was writing verse dramas, Tennyson was made a baron. 
He spent his last years at his residences on the Isle of Wight, where he had 
moved in 1853, and in Surrey, where he had had a summer house built in 1868. 

Though his stature was immense in his own time, Twentieth-Century 
re-evaluations of Tennyson's work - spearheaded by T.S. Eliot - have been 
somewhat critical.