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Portrait of Alfred Tennyson

Literature · Poets

Alfred Tennyson

1809–1892 · English

Victorian poetry

Alfred, Lord Tennyson was the dominant poet of Victorian Britain and Poet Laureate for over four decades, from 1850 until his death. His elegy In Memoriam A.H.H., his Arthurian Idylls of the King and poems such as "Ulysses", "The Lady of Shalott" and "The Charge of the Light Brigade" supplied the age with many of its most quoted lines.

How to spot them

  • ▸Poet Laureate 1850–1892, succeeding Wordsworth; the longest-serving laureate
  • ▸"'Tis better to have loved and lost"; "Nature, red in tooth and claw"
  • ▸"Theirs not to reason why"; "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield"
  • ▸Arthur Hallam; Somersby, Lincolnshire; Farringford on the Isle of Wight

Key works

The Lady of Shalott (1832 (revised 1842))

A cursed lady weaving in a tower sees Lancelot in her mirror, looks out and dies floating to Camelot

Ulysses (1842)

Dramatic monologue of the aged hero resolving to sail again; ends 'To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield'

In Memoriam A.H.H. (1850)

Long elegy for his friend Arthur Henry Hallam, wrestling with grief, faith and evolution

Maud (1855)

Monodrama of a morbid lover; contains 'Come into the garden, Maud'

The Charge of the Light Brigade (1854)

Commemorates the doomed cavalry charge at Balaclava in the Crimean War

Idylls of the King (1859–1885)

Cycle of blank-verse poems on King Arthur, his knights and the fall of Camelot

Crossing the Bar (1889)

Short poem on death which he asked to be placed at the end of all editions of his work

Key ideas

  • Gave voice to Victorian anxieties about faith in the face of geology and evolution (In Memoriam)
  • Revived Arthurian legend as a vehicle for moral and national themes
  • Master of musical, melancholy lyric and of the dramatic monologue

Quick-fire facts

  • •Born at Somersby, Lincolnshire, the son of a rector; studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he joined the Apostles
  • •Arthur Hallam, his closest friend and fiancé of his sister Emily, died suddenly in Vienna in 1833
  • •Became Poet Laureate in 1850 after Wordsworth, the same year he published In Memoriam and married Emily Sellwood
  • •Created Baron Tennyson in 1884, becoming Alfred, Lord Tennyson
  • •Lived at Farringford on the Isle of Wight and at Aldworth in Surrey
  • •Buried in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey; succeeded as laureate (after a gap) by Alfred Austin
  • •"'Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all" comes from In Memoriam
  • •Other famous lyrics include "Break, Break, Break", "The Kraken", "Mariana" and "Tears, Idle Tears"

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Sources