Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson

Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (1809–1892), was an English poet whose work became closely identified with the Victorian age. Born at Somersby, Lincolnshire, the son of the Reverend George Clayton Tennyson, he studied at Trinity College, Cambridge. There he became a close friend of Arthur Henry Hallam, whose sudden death in Vienna in 1833 profoundly affected him and became the occasion for the long elegy In Memoriam A.H.H.

Tennyson published poetry throughout a career that ranged from brief lyrics to long narrative and meditative works. In addition to In Memoriam, his best-known writings include "The Lady of Shalott," "Ulysses," "The Charge of the Light Brigade," "Idylls of the King," and "Crossing the Bar." His poetry repeatedly addresses memory, grief, moral responsibility, faith, doubt, nature, love, and the social anxieties of nineteenth-century Britain.

In 1850 Tennyson succeeded William Wordsworth as Poet Laureate, an office he held until his death. He was created Baron Tennyson in 1884 and died in 1892, after which he was buried in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey. Tennyson was not primarily a congregational hymn writer, but hymnal editors drew a number of passages from his poetry into Christian worship. "Ring Out, Wild Bells," taken from In Memoriam, is one of the best-known examples.