Discuss the life and works of Alfred Tennyson.

Ans.

Alfred Tennyson was born on August 6, 1809 in Lincolnshire, the country of which he painted the inland scenery in The May Queen and the coastland in Locksley Hall. He devoted his long span of life to the writing of poetry. Out of this period of poetic activity, fifty years formed a period during which he reigned supreme in the field of English poetry. Out of the twelve brothers and sisters he was fourth. His father was Rev. George Clayton Tennyson and mother was Elizabeth Fythch. His father was a clergyman. He got his early education at Grammar School in the neighboring town of South. He studied there upto the age of eleven. He could not like this school and in left it in 1820. For further eight years be studied at home under the guidance of his learned father. He started to compose verse. In 1828 Tennyson passed matriculation from the Trinity College, Cambridge.

After it Tennyson entered the college at Cambridge and gave ample proof of his poetic excellence. In 1827 he published a volume of verse named Poems by two Brothers. In 1829. he received the prize, Chancellor’s Medal for his poem Timbuctoo and next year he published his signed volume of verse called Poems, Chiefly Lyrical. In 1831 he left Cambridge without obtaining his degree and next year published his another volume of poetry named as Poems which was adversely criticized. The death of his close friend, Arthur Hallam in 1833 caused a great disaster to him. He met disgust due to the bitter love-affair with Rosa Baring. He, then, fell in love with Emily Sellwood and after thirteen years of his romance he married her in 1850. Saddened by his criticism and death of Arthur Hallam, he wrote much but did not publish anything during next ten years. In 1842 he was persuaded by his friends to publish his volume of Poems which won great name to the author Ulysses and Morte d’ Arthur were the outcome of this volume. His The Princess (1847) and In Memoriam (1850) helped him his position and esteem as a poet. In the same year he was made Poet Laureate and married his beloved Emily. He travelled in Italy and France with his wife and stayed for some years in Sussex. He passed the later part of his life in Aldworth near Haslemere where he had built a house. It was here that he died on October 6, 1892. His major works are as under:

A. Plays: Queen Mary (1875), Harold (1878), The Falcon (1879), The Beckett (1884), Cup (1889) and The Foresters (1892).

B. Poems: Poems by ‘Two Brothers (1827), Timbuctoo (1829), Poems, Chiefly Lyrical (1830), Poems (1833), Poems by Alfred Tennyson 2 vol. (1842), The Princess (1847), In Memoriam (1850), Maudado Other Poems (1855), Idylls of the King (1859), Enoch Arden (1864), Locksley Hall Sixty Years After (1886) and The Death of Oneone (1892).