Tennyson, Alfred

English poet. He was poet laureate 1850–92. His verse has a majestic, musical quality, and few poets have surpassed his precision and delicacy of language. His works include ‘The Lady of Shalott’ (1833), ‘The Lotus Eaters’ (1833), ‘Ulysses’ (1842), ‘Break, Break, Break’ (1842), and ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ (1854); the longer narratives Locksley Hall (1832) and Maud (1855); the elegy In Memoriam (1850); and a long series of poems on the Arthurian legends, The Idylls of the King (1859–89). Tennyson's poetry is characterized by a wide range of interests; an intense sympathy with the deepest feelings and aspirations of humanity; an exquisite sense of beauty; and a marvellous power of vivid and minute description, often achieved by a single phrase, and heightened by the perfect matching of sense and sound.

He was born in Somersby, Lincolnshire, and educated at Cambridge. An unhappy childhood and youth may account for his remarkable sensitivity, depression, and melancholia in later years. The death of English writer Arthur Hallam (a close friend during his years at Cambridge) in 1833 prompted the elegiac, mournful sequence In Memoriam, which grew over the years into a record of spiritual conflict and a confession of faith; it was finally published (anonymously) in 1850, the year in which he succeeded English poet William Wordsworth as poet laureate and married Emily Sellwood (1811–1889). He was made a peer in 1884. Tennyson lived on the Isle of Wight from 1853–69; he then built a house at Aldworth, near Haslemere, Surrey, which was his home until his death.