Alfred, Lord Tennyson was born plain Alfred Tennyson in 1809, the fourth son of the Revrend George Clayton Tennyson, rector of Somersby, in Lincolnshire. His early childhood was a mixture of easy informality amongst numerous siblings, a rigorous classical education conducted by his father, and an increasing fear of his father's drunken violence and paranoid resentment at family injustices. Tennyson's fear of inherited madness, what he called “the black blood of the Tennysons”, would be with him for much of his life and would provide a stimulus for one of his most important poems, Maud.

Tennyson wrote poems throughout his adolescence and his first publication was a self-financed volume, Poems by Two Brothers, publi

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First published 17 July 2001

Citation: Shaw, Marion. "Alfred, Lord Tennyson". The Literary Encyclopedia. 17 July 2001.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4349, accessed 20 November 2009.]