Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson, FRS (6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892) was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom during much of Queen Victoria's reign and remains one of the most popular British poets
Alfred Tennyson was born in the depths of Lincolnshire, the fourth son of the twelve children of the rector of Somersby, George Clayton Tennyson
A little bit more of history
Victoria was the only child of Prince Edward (Duke of Kent) and Princess Victoria Mary Louisa of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. Prince Edward (1767-1820) was the fourth son of King George lll.
Victoria was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (1837-1901) and empress of India (1876-1901). Her reign was the longest of any monarch in British history and came to be known as the Victorian era
Victoria was born at Kensington Palace, London
Victoria was christened 'Alexandrina Victoria'. However, from birth she was formally addressed as Her Royal Highness Princess Victoria of Kent.
Victoria was part of a family of Germans, mainly called George, who came from Hanover.
Most of Tennyson's early education was under the direction of his father.
His first volume of poetry was published
In part it was the urging of his friends, in part the insistence of his father that led the normally indolent Tennyson to retailor an old poem on the subject of Armageddon and submit it in the competition for the chancellor's gold medal for poetry; the announced subject was Timbuctoo. Tennyson's "Timbuctoo" is a strange poem, as the process of its creation would suggest. He uses the legendary city for a consideration of the relative validity of imagination and objective reality; Timbuctoo takes its magic from the mind of man, but it can turn to dust at the touch of the mundane. It is far from a successful poem, but it shows how deeply engaged its author was with the Romantic conception of poetry.
Hallam and Tennyson became members of the secret society known as the Apostles, a group of roughly a dozen undergraduates who were usually regarded as the elite of the entire university.
Early the following year Tennyson had to leave Cambridge because of the death of his father. Dr. Tennyson had totally deteriorated mentally and physically, and he left little but debts to his family, although he had enjoyed a good income and a large allowance from his father.
The 1832 Poems was a great step forward poetically and included the first versions of some of Tennyson's greatest works, such as "The Lady of Shalott," "The Palace of Art," "A Dream of Fair Women," "The Hesperides," and three wonderful poems conceived in the Pyrenees, "Oenone," "The Lotos-Eaters," and "Mariana in the South."
"I suffered what seemed to me to shatter all my life so that I desired to die rather than to live," he said of that period. For a time he determined to leave England, and for ten years he refused to have any of his poetry published, since he was convinced that the world had no place for it.
In 1836, however, at the age of twenty-seven, Tennyson became seriously involved with Emily Sellwood, who was four years younger than he. By the following year they considered themselves engaged. Emily had been a friend of Tennyson's sisters, and one of her own sisters married his next older (and favorite) brother, Charles. Most of the correspondence between Tennyson and Emily has been destroyed, but from what remains it is clear that she was very much in love with him, although he apparently withheld himself somewhat in spite of his affection for her. He was worried about not having enough money to marry, but he seems also to have been much concerned with the trances into which he was still falling, which he thought were connected with the epilepsy from which other members of the family suffered. To marry, he thought, would mean passing on the disease to any children he might father.
Queen Victoria reigned for exactly sixty-three years, seven months, and two days (June 20, 1837 - January 22, 1901). Queen Victoria is our longest ever serving monarch.
Queen Victoria came to the throne when she was only 18 years of age on June 20, 1837. Her coronation was a year later on 28 June 1838.
At the age of 21, Victoria married her cousin, Albert of Saxe-Coburg Gotha, a German Prince. They married on the 10th February 1840 at the Chapel Royal in St. James's Palace. Victoria had nine children, 40 grand-children and 37 great-grandchildren, scattered all over Europe. Most of Queen Victoria's children married into other royal families of Europe.
Queen Victoria with his husband
In the summer of 1840 Tennyson broke off all relations with Emily. She continued to think of herself as engaged to him, but he abandoned any hope of marriage, either then or in the future. To spare her further embarrassment, the story was put out that her father had forbidden their marriage because of Tennyson's poverty; this legend has been perpetuated in the present century.
Queen Victoria and Prince Albert had 9 children (4 boys and 5 girls).
But the bad luck that Tennyson seemed to invite struck again just as the favorable reviews were appearing. Two years earlier, expecting to make a fortune, he had invested his patrimony in a scheme to manufacture cheap wood carvings by steamdriven machines. In 1842 the scheme crashed, taking with it nearly everything that Tennyson owned, some £4,000. The shock set back any progress he had made in his emotional state over the past ten years, and in 1843 he had to go into a "hydropathic" establishment for seven months of treatment in the hope of curing his deep melancholia.
Queen Victoria loved singing and she enjoyed painting and drawing. She loved going to the opera.
Queen Victoria had many homes. She lived in Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, Osborne House (Isle of Wight) and Balmoral Castle. Queen Victoria was the first monarch to live in Buckingham Palace.
The poem In Memoriam about a man’s love for another man includes sexual imagery; for example, the poet compares his sorrow to the sorrow of a loving widower who misses his late wife in bed. Tears of the widower, when he sees A late-lost form that sleep reveals, And moves his doubtful arms, and feels Her place is empty, fall like these;
Tennyson's luck at last seemed to be on the upturn. At the beginning of 1849 he received a large advance from his publisher with the idea that he would assemble and polish his "elegies" on Hallam, to be published as a whole poem. Before the year was over he had resumed communication with Emily Sellwood, and by the beginning of 1850 he was speaking confidently of marrying. On 1 June In Memoriam was published, and less than two weeks later he and Emily were married quietly at Shiplake Church. Improbable as it might seem for a man to whom little but bad fortune had come, both events were total successes.
Her husband Albert died in 1861 at the young age of 42. She mourned his death for almost 10 years. For the rest of her reign she wore black.
Whilst Victoria was Queen there was a tremendous change in the lives of British people: Britain became the most powerful country in the world, with the largest empire that had ever existed, ruling a quarter of the world's population. The number of people living in Britain more than doubled, causing a huge demand for food, clothes and housing. Factories and machines were built to meet this demand and new towns grew up, changing the landscape and the ways people lived and worked. Railways, originally built to transport goods, meant people could travel easily around the country for the first time.
Marconi patented wireless telegraphy (June 2). Speed limit for cars was increased from 4 to 20 mph. The Savoy ( January–September).
Official opening of the Tate Gallery, founded by Sir Henry Tate (July 21). Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
Queen Victoria died on 22 January, 1901 at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. She was 81. Queen Victoria was survived by 6 children, 40 grandchildren and 37 great-grandchildren, including four future sovereigns of England: Edward VII, George V, Edward VIII and George VI.
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