Alfred Tennyson was born on August 6th, 1809, at Somersby, Lincolnshire. He was the fourth of twelve children born to George and Elizabeth (Fytche) Tennyson. The reasons are unclear but the poet's grandfather violated tradition by making his younger son, Charles, his heir, and arranging for the poet's father to enter the ministry. The contrast between his family's relatively strained financial circumstances and the great wealth of his Aunt Elizabeth Russell and Uncle Charles Tennyson, who lived in castles, made Tennyson feel particularly impoverished and led him to worry about money throughout his life.
Tennyson also had a lifelong fear of mental illness because several men in his family had a mild form of epilepsy, which, at the time, was thought to be a shameful disease. His father and brother, Arthur, made their epilepsy worse by drinking excessively. His brother Edward had to be confined to a mental institution after 1833, and he himself spent a few weeks under doctors' care in 1843. During the late 820s, his father's physical and mental condition worsened, and he became paranoid, abusive and violent.
In 1827, Tennyson escaped the troubled atmosphere of his home when he followed his two older brothers to Trinity College in Cambridge, England. Because they had published Poems by Two Brothers in 1827, and each won university prizes for poetry, Alfred winning the Chancellor's Gold Medal in 1828 for ÒTimbuctooÓ, the Tennyson brothers became very well known at Cambridge. In 1829, "The Apostles", an undergraduate club, whose members remained Tennyson's lifelong friends, invited him to join them. The group met to discuss major philosophical and other issues. Eventually, all of the group's members became famous men who merited entries in the Dictionary of National Biography.
Since Tennyson was always highly sensitive to criticism, the mixed reception to his 1832 Poems hurt him deeply. Critics in those days seemingly delighted in the harshness of their reviews. In fact, John Wilson Croker's harsh criticism of some of the poems in the anthology kept Tennyson from publishing again for another nine years.
Late in the 1830s, Tennyson again grew increasingly concerned about his mental health and visited a sanitarium run by Dr. Matthew Allen, with whom he later invested his inheritance and some of his family's money. When Dr. Allen's scheme for mass-producing wood carvings using steam power went bankrupt, Tennyson, who did not have enough money to marry, had to end his engagement to Emily Sellwood, whom he had met at his brother Charles's wedding to her sister, Louisa.
The success of his 1842 Poems made Tennyson a highly popular poet, and in 1845 he received a Civil List, government, pension which helped relieve his financial difficulties; the success of The Princess and In Memoriam and his appointment, in 1850, as Poet Laureate finally established him as the most popular poet of the Victorian era.
By now Tennyson, who was only 41, had written some of his greatest poetry, but he continued to write gain popularity. After 1853, he was even recognized by the royal family for the popularity of his poetry.
Tennyson suffered from extreme short-sightedness; for without a monocle he could not even see to eat. It made writing and reading very difficult and, in part, accounts for his manner of creating poetry. Tennyson reportedly composed much of his poetry in his head, occasionally working on individual poems for many years. During his undergraduate days at Cambridge he often did not bother to write down his compositions, although he was continually prodded to do so.
Like most of his family, no matter how unhealthy they seemed to be, Alfred, Lord Tennyson lived a long life and died on October 6, 1892, at the age of 83.