Tennyson biography by CP

Poet`s Life & Death, Faith & Love
Tennyson was the fourth of 12 children, born August 6, 1809 into an old Lincolnshire family, his father a priest, a rector.
He left Louth grammar school in 1820, but, though home conditions were difficult, his father managed to give him a wide literary education.
Alfred was precocious, and before his teens he had composed in the styles of Alexander Pope, Sir Walter Scott, and John Milton. Lord Byron was a dominant influence on the young Tennyson.
In 1824 the health of Tennyson’s father began to break down, and he took refuge in drink. In 1831 he died.

Poet`s Life & Death, Faith & Love
In 1827 Alfred and his brother Charles joined their brother Frederick at Trinity College, Cambridge. There Alfred made friends with Arthur Hallam, the gifted son of the historian Henry Hallam. This was the deepest friendship of Tennyson’s life. The friends became members of the Apostles, an exclusive undergraduate club of earnest intellectual interests
Tennyson’s reputation as a poet increased at Cambridge. In 1829 he won the chancellor’s gold medal with a poem called Timbuctoo. In 1830 Poems, Chiefly Lyrical was published; and in the same year Tennyson, Hallam, and other Apostles went to Spain to help in the unsuccessful revolution against Ferdinand VII

Poet`s Life & Death, Faith & Love
"The Princess" (1847), a long narrative poem, was Tennyson's next notable work. But he hit a career high note with "In Memoriam" (1850). The elegiac creation, which contains the famous lines, "’Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all," incorporated Tennyson's sorrow about his friend Arthur Hallam's death. It greatly impressed readers and won Tennyson many admirers.
An episode in the Crimean War led to Tennyson penning "The Charge of the Light Brigade" in 1854; the work was also included in Maud, and Other Poems (1855). The first four books of Tennyson's Idylls of the King, an epic take on the Arthurian legend, appeared in 1859.