Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892) was born in Somersby, Lincolnshire,
the third surviving son of a rector whose violent alcoholism
blighted the family home. Tennyson went to Cambridge where he
met Arthur Henry Hallam whose early death was to prompt Tennyson
to write his great elegy of mourning, In Memoriam. Tennyson had
begun writing as a child and published some of his best-known
poems, including 'Mariana', when he was only twenty. However,
success was slow to come and the years between Hallam's death
and 1843 when Tennyson began to receive an annual government
grant were difficult, financially and emotionally. His situation
changed with the publication of In Memoriam which brought him
lasting fame and success and for the next forty years he was the
dominant figure in English poetry, being made Poet Laureate in
1850 following the death of Wordsworth. Later work such as The
Idylls of the King were held in high esteem and sold well. By
this time he was married to Emily Sellwood after a prolonged
ten-year engagement