Lord Alfred Tennyson

Date of birth: 1809 — Date of death: 1892

Poet. Son of Revrend George Clayton Tennyson, rector of Somersby, Lincolnshire, Tennyson received a classical education from his father and entered Trinity College, Cambridge in 1827. Here, Tennyson met Arthur Henry Hallam, the subject of Tennyson's greatest poem In Memoriam (1850). Appointed Poet Laureate in 1850 on the basis of this work, Tennyson also married Emily Sellwood in this year.