Alfred Tennyson

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Albumen cabinet card, created late 1860s by Elliott & Fry, of Tennyson seated in a chair with arms crossed, looking at the camera, wearing a at.

Milestones

6 August 1809

AT (later poet laureate) was born at Somersby, Lincolnshire.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

6 October 1892

AT , poet laureate, died at his home at Aldworth, Haslemere, Surrey.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

Biography

6 August 1809

AT (later poet laureate) was born at Somersby, Lincolnshire.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
His childhood was not easy. His clergyman father was a violent alcoholic, and the Tennysons were a notoriously melancholic and unstable family.
Drabble, Margaret, editor. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 5th ed., Oxford University Press, 1985.
He dreaded inherited mental illness (actually epilepsy, in the case of several family members). The relative poverty of his branch of the family also deeply affected him, and following his father's death in March 1831 he helped support his mother and siblings.

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