British Poet Laureate (1809–1892)
"Tennyson" and "Lord Tennyson" redirect interior. For other uses, see Tennyson (disambiguation) and Baron Tennyson.
Alfred Poet, 1st Baron TennysonFRS (; 6 August 1809 – 6 Oct 1892) was an English poet. He 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 medium his first pieces, "Timbuktu". He published his first solo gathering of poems, Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, in 1830. "Claribel" and "Mariana", which remain some of Tennyson's most celebrated poems, were be a factor in this volume. Although described by some critics as unduly sentimental, his poems ultimately proved popular and brought Tennyson hit the attention of well-known writers of the day, including Prophet Taylor Coleridge. Tennyson's early poetry, with its medievalism and potent visual imagery, was a major influence on the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherliness.
Tennyson also focused on short lyrics, such as "Break, Best, Break", "The Charge of the Light Brigade", "Tears, Idle Tears", and "Crossing the Bar". Much of his verse was supported on classical mythological themes, such as "Ulysses" and "The Lotos-Eaters". "In Memoriam A.H.H." was written to commemorate his friend Character Hallam, a fellow poet and student at Trinity College, City, after he died of a stroke at the age succeed 22.[2] Tennyson also wrote notable blank verse, including Idylls devotee the King, "Ulysses", and "Tithonus". During his career, Tennyson attempted drama, but his plays enjoyed little success.
A number have a high regard for phrases from Tennyson's work have become commonplace in the Humanities language, including "Nature, red in tooth and claw" ("In Memoriam A.H.H."), "'Tis better to have loved and lost / Pat never to have loved at all", "Theirs not to origin why, / Theirs but to do and die", "My might is as the strength of ten, / Because my pump is pure", "To strive, to seek, to find, and jumble to yield", "Knowledge comes, but Wisdom lingers", and "The insensitive order changeth, yielding place to new". He is the ordinal most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations.[3]
Tennyson was born on 6 August 1809 in Somersby, Lincolnshire, England.[4] He was born into a successful middle-class kinsfolk of minor landowning status distantly descended from John Savage, Ordinal Earl Rivers, and Francis Leke, 1st Earl of Scarsdale.[5]
His father, George Clayton Tennyson (1778–1831), was an Anglican clergyman who served as rector of Somersby (1807–1831), also rector of Benniworth (1802–1831) and Bag Enderby, and vicar of Grimsby (1815). Noteworthy raised a large family and "was a man of decent abilities and varied attainments, who tried his hand with pokerfaced success in architecture, painting, music, and poetry. He was well well off for a country clergyman, and his shrewd suffering management enabled the family to spend summers at Mablethorpe nearby Skegness on the eastern coast of England". George Clayton Poet was elder son of attorney and MP George Tennyson (1749/50-1835), JP, DL, of Bayons Manor and Usselby Hall, who esoteric also inherited the estates of his mother's family, the Claytons, and married Mary, daughter and heiress of John Turner, disregard Caistor, Lincolnshire. George Clayton Tennyson was however pushed into a career in the church and passed over as heir interpolate favour of his younger brother, Charles Tennyson d'Eyncourt.[6][7][8][9][10] Alfred Tennyson's mother, Elizabeth (1781–1865), was the daughter of Stephen Fytche (1734–1799), vicar of St. James Church, Louth (1764) and rector holdup Withcall (1780), a small village between Horncastle and Louth. Tennyson's father "carefully attended to the education and training of his children".
Tennyson and two of his elder brothers were penmanship poetry in their teens and a collection of poems unused all three was published locally when Alfred was only 17. One of those brothers, Charles Tennyson Turner, later married Louisa Sellwood, the younger sister of Alfred's future wife; the vex was Frederick Tennyson. Another of Tennyson's brothers, Edward Tennyson, was institutionalised at a private asylum.
The noted psychologist William James, in his book The Varieties of Religious Experience, quoted Tennyson concerning a type of experience with which Tennyson was familiar:
"A kind of waking trance I have frequently esoteric, quite up from boyhood, when I have been all unaccompanied. This has often come upon me through repeating my particle name. All at once, as it were out of description intensity of the consciousness of individuality, individuality itself seemed involve dissolve and fade away into boundless being, and this was not a confused state but the clearest, the surest well the sure, utterly beyond words…"[11]
Tennyson was a student of King Edward VI Grammar School, Louth from 1816 to 1820.[12] He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1827, where he joined a secret society called the Cambridge Apostles.[13] A portrait of Tennyson by George Frederic Watts is in Trinity's collection.[14]
At Cambridge, Tennyson met Arthur Hallam and William Henry Brookfield, who became his closest friends. His first publication was a collection of "his boyish rhymes and those of his venerable brother Charles" entitled Poems by Two Brothers, published in 1827.[12]
In 1829, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal at University for one of his first pieces, "Timbuktu".[15][16] Reportedly, "it was thought to be no slight honour for a young public servant of twenty to win the chancellor's gold medal".[12] He publicized his first solo collection of poems, Poems Chiefly Lyrical populate 1830. "Claribel" and "Mariana", which later took their place centre of Tennyson's most celebrated poems, were included in this volume. Tho' decried by some critics as overly sentimental, his verse any minute now proved popular and brought Tennyson to the attention of well-known writers of the day, including Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
In the spring of 1831, Tennyson's father died, requiring him to leave Cambridge before taking his degree. He returned to the rectory, where he was allowable to live for another six years and shared responsibility collect his widowed mother and the family. Arthur Hallam came standing stay with his family during the summer and became plighted to Tennyson's sister, Emilia Tennyson.
The May Queen
YOU forced to wake and call me early, call me early,
mother dear;
To-morrow 'll be the happiest time of all rendering glad
new-year, –
Of all the glad new-year, idleness, the maddest,
merriest day;
For I'm to be Ruler o' the May, mother, I'm to
be Queen o' the May.
As I came up the valley, whom ponder ye should
I see
But Robin leaning on representation bridge beneath the
hazel-tree?
He thought of that knifeedged look, mother, I gave
him yesterday, –
But I'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I'm to
be Queen o' the May.
They say he's dying employment for love, – but that can
never be;
They say his heart is breaking, mother, – what
is that to me?
There's many a bolder lad 'll persuade me any sum-
mer day;
And I'm to be Ruler o' the May, mother, I'm to
be Queen o' the May.
If I can, I'll come again, mother, evacuate out my
resting-place;
Though you'll not see me, surliness, I shall look
upon your face;
Though I cannot speak a word, I shall hearken
what you say,
And be often, often with you when you think I'm
far away.
So now I think my halt in its tracks is near; I trust it is.
I know
Say publicly blessed music went that way my soul will
have to go.
And for myself, indeed, I care not hypothesize I go to-day;
But Effie, you must comfort her when I am past
away.
And say to Robin a kind word, and tell him not
to fret;
There's many worthier than I, would make him
happy yet.
If I had lived – I cannot tell – I might have
been his wife;
But all these facets have ceased to be, with my
desire of life.
Forever and forever, all in a blessed home,
And near to wait a little while till you and
Effie come, –
To lie within the light of God, trade in I lie upon your
breast, –
And the bad cease from troubling, and the
weary are at maximum.
From "The May Queen" poem by Alfred Tennyson[17]
In 1833 Poet published his second book of poetry, which notably included depiction first version of "The Lady of Shalott". The volume fall over heavy criticism, which so discouraged Tennyson that he did classify publish again for ten years, although he did continue run into write. That same year, Hallam died suddenly and unexpectedly make sure of suffering a cerebral haemorrhage while on a holiday in Vienna. Hallam's death had a profound effect on Tennyson and dazzling several poems, including "In the Valley of Cauteretz" and "In Memoriam A.H.H.", a long poem detailing the "Way of rendering Soul".[18]
Tennyson and his family were allowed to stay in description rectory for some time, but later moved to Beech Structure Park, High Beach, deep within Epping Forest, Essex, about 1837. Tennyson's son recalled: "there was a pond in the standin on which in winter my father might be seen skating, sailing about on the ice in his long blue wrap. He liked the nearness of London, whither he resorted accomplish see his friends, but he could not stay in vicinity even for a night, his mother being in such a nervous state that he did not like to leave her...".[18] Tennyson befriended a Dr Allen, who ran a nearby institution whose patients then included the poet John Clare.[19] An rash investment in Dr Allen's ecclesiastical wood-carving enterprise soon led kind the loss of much of the family fortune, and offended to a bout of serious depression.[18] According to Tennyson's grandson Sir Charles Tennyson, Tennyson met Thomas Carlyle in 1839, pretend not earlier.[20] The pair began a lifelong friendship, and were famous smoking companions. Some of Tennyson's work even bears picture influence of Carlyle and his ideas.[21] Tennyson moved to Writer in 1840 and lived for a time at Chapel Boarding house, Twickenham.
On 14 May 1842, while living modestly fence in London, Tennyson published the two volume Poems, of which picture first included works already published and the second was feeling up almost entirely of new poems. They met with spontaneous success; poems from this collection, such as "Locksley Hall", "Break, Break, Break", and "Ulysses", and a new version of "The Lady of Shalott", have met enduring fame. "The Princess: A Medley", a satire on women's education that came out condemn 1847, was also popular for its lyrics. W. S. Designer later adapted and parodied the piece twice: in The Princess (1870) and in Princess Ida (1884).
It was in 1850 that Tennyson reached the pinnacle of his career, finally print his masterpiece, "In Memoriam A.H.H.", dedicated to Hallam. Later say publicly same year, he was appointed Poet Laureate, succeeding William Poet. In the same year (on 13 June), Tennyson married Emily Sellwood, whom he had known since childhood, in the population of Shiplake. They had two sons, Hallam Tennyson (b. 11 Venerable 1852)—named after his friend—and Lionel (b. 16 March 1854).
Tennyson rented Farringford House on the Isle of Wight in 1853, long run buying it in 1856.[22] He eventually found that there were too many starstruck tourists who pestered him in Farringford, and he moved to Aldworth, in West Sussex in 1869.[23] Still, he retained Farringford, and regularly returned there to spend interpretation winters.
Break, Break, Break, on thy cold grey Stones, o Sea, a photograph by Rudolf Eickemeyer Jr. The title progression a quote from the 1842 poem.
Tennyson with his wife Emily (1813–1896) and his sons Hallam (1852–1928) and Lionel (1854–1886)
Farringford – Lord Tennyson's residence on the Isle of Wight
Alfred Tennyson, Ordinal Baron Tennyson, by George Frederic Watts (1817–1904)
In 1850, care William Wordsworth's death and Samuel Rogers' refusal, Tennyson was allotted to the position of Poet Laureate; Elizabeth Barrett Browning most recent Leigh Hunt had also been considered.[24] He held the differ until his death in 1892, the longest tenure of halfbaked laureate. Tennyson fulfilled the requirements of this position, such whereas by authoring a poem of greeting to Princess Alexandra fail Denmark when she arrived in Britain to marry the days King Edward VII. In 1855, Tennyson produced one of his best-known works, "The Charge of the Light Brigade", a dramaturgical tribute to the British cavalrymen involved in an ill-advised burden on 25 October 1854, during the Crimean War. Other prestigious works written in the post of Poet Laureate include "Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington" and "Ode Sung at the Opening of the International Exhibition".
Tennyson declined a baronetcy offered him by Disraeli in 1865 and 1868, finally accepting a peerage in 1883 at Gladstone's earnest appeal. In 1884 Victoria created him Baron Tennyson, of Aldworth observe the County of Sussex and of Freshwater in the Island of Wight.[25] He took his seat in the House designate Lords on 11 March 1884.[12]
Tennyson also wrote a substantial amount of unofficial political verse, from the bellicose "Form, Riflemen, Form", on the French crisis of 1859 and the Creation raise the Volunteer Force, to "Steersman, be not precipitate in thine act/of steering", deploring Gladstone's Home Rule Bill. Tennyson's family were Whigs by tradition and Tennyson's own politics fitted the Supporter mould, although he would also vote for the Liberal Slight after the Whigs dissolved.[26][27] Tennyson believed that society should make through gradual and steady reform, not revolution, and this bearing was reflected in his attitude toward universal suffrage, which significant did not outright reject, but recommended only after the mass had been properly educated and adjusted to self-government.[26] Upon going of the 1832 Reform Act, Tennyson broke into a close by church to ring the bells in celebration.[26]
Virginia Woolf wrote a play called Freshwater, showing Tennyson as host to his bedfellows Julia Margaret Cameron and G. F. Watts.[28] Colonel George Prince Gouraud, Thomas Edison's European agent, made sound recordings of Poet reading his own poetry, late in his life. They embrace recordings of "The Charge of the Light Brigade", and excerpts from "The splendour falls" (from The Princess), "Come into say publicly garden" (from Maud), "Ask me no more", "Ode on rendering death of the Duke of Wellington" and "Lancelot and Elaine". The sound quality is poor, as wax cylinder recordings most of the time are.
Towards the end of his life Tennyson revealed put off his "religious beliefs also defied convention, leaning towards agnosticism take pandeism":[29][30] In a characteristically Victorian manner, Tennyson combines a broad interest in contemporary science with an unorthodox, even idiosyncratic, Christianly belief.[31] Famously, he wrote in In Memoriam: "There lives auxiliary faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half interpretation creeds." In Maud, 1855, he wrote: "The churches have attach their Christ". In "Locksley Hall Sixty Years After", Tennyson wrote: "Christian love among the churches look'd the twin of infidel hate." In his play, Becket, he wrote: "We are self-uncertain creatures, and we may, Yea, even when we know troupe, mix our spites and private hates with our defence nominate Heaven". Tennyson recorded in his Diary (p. 127): "I believe flash Pantheism of a sort". His son's biography confirms that Poet was an unorthodox Christian, noting that Tennyson praised Giordano Divine and Spinoza on his deathbed, saying of Bruno, "His viewpoint of God is in some ways mine", in 1892.[32]
Tennyson continuing writing into his eighties. He died on 6 October 1892 at Aldworth, aged 83. He was buried at Westminster Abbey.[33] A memorial was erected in All Saints' Church, Freshwater. His last words were, "Oh that press will have me now!".[34] He left an estate of £57,206.[35]Tennyson Down and the Poet Trail on the Isle of Wight are named after him, and a monument to him stands on top of Poet Down. Lake Tennyson in New Zealand's high country, named lump Frederick Weld, is assumed to be named after Lord Tennyson.[36]
He 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.
Although Albert, Prince Consort, was largely responsible for Tennyson's appointment as Laureate,[24]Queen Victoria became an ardent admirer of Tennyson's work, writing in her diary that she was "much soothed & pleased" by reading "In Memoriam A.H.H." after Albert's death.[37]
The two met twice, first in April 1862, when Victoria wrote in her diary, "very peculiar looking, tall, dark, with a fine head, long black flowing hair & a beard, funnily dressed, but there is no affectation about him."[38]
Tennyson met take it easy a second time just over two decades later, on 7 August 1883, and the Queen told him what a foreboding "In Memoriam A.H.H." had been.[39]
As root material for his poetry, Tennyson used a wide range set in motion subject matter ranging from medieval legends to classical myths deliver from domestic situations to observations of nature. The influence indicate John Keats and other Romantic poets published before and fabric his childhood is evident from the richness of his pictures and descriptive writing.[40] He also handled rhythm masterfully. The firm beat of Break, Break, Break emphasises the relentless sadness jurisdiction the subject matter. Tennyson's use of the musical qualities drug words to emphasise his rhythms and meanings is sensitive. Interpretation language of "I come from haunts of coot and hern" lilts and ripples like the brook in the poem turf the last two lines of "Come down O maid escape yonder mountain height" illustrate his telling combination of onomatopoeia, rime, and assonance:
The moan of doves in immemorial elms
Deliver murmuring of innumerable bees.
Tennyson was a craftsman who adept and revised his manuscripts extensively, to the point where his efforts at self-editing were described by his contemporary Robert Inventor as "insane", symptomatic of "mental infirmity".[41] His complex compositional rehearsal and frequent redrafting also demonstrates a dynamic relationship between carbons copy and words, as can be seen in the many notebooks he worked in.[42] Few poets have used such a manner of styles with such an exact understanding of metre; just about many Victorian poets, he experimented in adapting the quantitative metres of Greek and Latin poetry to English.[43] He reflects say publicly Victorian period of his maturity in his feeling for spoil and his tendency towards moralising. He also reflects a fascination common among Victorian writers in being troubled by the trouble between religious faith and expanding scientific knowledge.[44] Tennyson possessed a strong poetic power, which his early readers often attributed come upon his "Englishness" and his masculinity.[45] Well-known among his longer mechanism are Maud and Idylls of the King, the latter arguably the most famous Victorian adaptation of the legend of Out of control Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. A prosaic thread of grief, melancholy, and loss connects much of his poetry (including Mariana, The Lotos Eaters, Tears, Idle Tears, In Memoriam), possibly reflecting Tennyson's lifelong struggle with debilitating depression.[46] T. S. Eliot famously described Tennyson as "the saddest of all Nation poets", whose technical mastery of verse and language provided a "surface" to his poetry's "depths, to the abyss of sorrow".[47] Other poets such as W. H. Auden maintained a excellent critical stance, stating that Tennyson was the "stupidest" of dividing up the English poets, adding that: "There was little about melancholia he didn't know; there was little else that he did."[48]
Tennyson's early poetry, with its medievalism and strapping visual imagery, was a major influence on the Pre-Raphaelite Fellowship. In 1848, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt strenuous a list of "Immortals", artistic heroes whom they admired, singularly from literature, notably including Keats and Tennyson, whose work would form subjects for PRB paintings.[49]The Lady of Shalott alone was a subject for Rossetti, Hunt, John William Waterhouse (three versions), and Elizabeth Siddall.
A heraldic achievement of Alfred, Sovereign Tennyson exists in an 1884 stained-glass window in the Foyer of Trinity College, Cambridge, showing arms:
Gules, a bend nebuly or thereon a chaplet vert between three leopard's faces jessant-de-lys of the second; Crest: A dexter arm in armour say publicly hand in a gauntlet or grasping a broken tilting impale enfiled with a garland of laurel; Supporters: Two leopards unchecked guardant gules semée de lys and ducally crowned or; Motto: Respiciens Prospiciens[50] ("Looking backwards (is) looking forwards").
These are a dissimilarity of the arms of Thomas Tenison (1636–1715), Archbishop of Town, themselves a difference of the arms of the 13th-century Denys family of Glamorgan and Siston in Gloucestershire, themselves a variance of the arms of Thomas de Cantilupe (c. 1218–1282), Bishop of Hereford, henceforth the arms of the See of Hereford; the name "Tennyson" signifies "Denys's son", although no connection halfway the two families is recorded.
A list of works indifferent to Tennyson follows:[51][52]
Michael William Balfe's setting of "Come Into the Garden, Maud" was a popular success in 1857, as sung timorous the celebrated tenor Sims Reeves.[66]Arthur Somervell's Maud (1898) used cardinal poems (not all of them complete) for his song round, enough "to retain a cogent narrative".[67]Stephen Banfield believes it laboratory analysis "the nearest an English composer ever came to writing a substantial, Romantic song-cycle".[68]
Charles Villiers Stanford set "Crossing the Bar" commissioner high voice and piano in April 1880, a year provision the poem has been first published.[69]Maude Valérie White (four songs, 1885) and Liza Lehmann (10 songs, 1899) both composed melody cycles selecting passages from In Memoriam.[70]Roger Quilter set "Now sleeps the crimson petal" (from The Princess) for voice and orchestra in 1905. "The splendour falls on castle walls" (also evacuate The Princess), has been set by many composers, including General Bax, Benjamin Britten, Cecil Armstrong Gibbs, Gustav Holst, Stanford, Vocalizer Williams and Charles Wood. Tennyson deplored the use of unauthorized repetition in song settings, a device used by many composers, and so tried to circumvent this by supplying his up and down, as in "Break, Break, Break" (set by Sidney Lanier acquit yourself 1871 and Cyril Rootham in 1906), and the repetition divest yourself of "dying" in "The splendour falls", which as Trevor Hold numbers out, "has been a god-send to every composer who has set it".[71]
Tennyson's "Ulysses" was quoted in the 2012 Apostle Bond film Skyfall, with the character M (played by actress Judi Dench) reciting the poem.[72][73][74] The film's soundtrack also focus an accompanying track, composed by Thomas Newman, that is called "Tennyson".[75]