Baron Alfred Tennyson Tennyson

Born in Somersby, Lincolnshire, on August 6, 1809, Alfred Tennyson became one of the best-known poets of the 19th century. He studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he formed an important friendship with Arthur Hallam. Hallam's early death deeply affected him and helped shape some of his most powerful writing.

Tennyson built his reputation through poems such as Ulysses, The Lotos-Eaters, The Charge of the Light Brigade, In Memoriam A.H.H., and Idylls of the King. In 1850 he was appointed Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, a role he held for much of Queen Victoria's reign, and in 1884 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Tennyson.

Often seen as the leading poet of the Victorian age, he wrote verse that could be intimate and reflective or grand and public-facing. He died on October 6, 1892, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, a sign of the extraordinary place he held in British literary life.