Alfred Tennyson and His Work
Alfred Tennyson was born on August 6th, 1809, at Somersby, Lincolnshire,
fourth of twelve children of George and Elizabeth Tennyson. Tennyson, said to
be the best poet of the Victorian era and his poetry will be discussed in this
essay.
Tennyson had a lifelong fear of mental illness, because several men in
his family had a mild form of epilepsy, which then was thought of as a shameful
disease. His father and brother Arthur made their epilepsy worse by excessive
drinking. His brother Edward had to be put in a mental institution after 1833,
and he spent a few weeks himself under doctor's care in 1843. In the late
twenties his father's physical and mental condition got worse, and he became
paranoid, abusive, and violent.
In 1827 Tennyson escaped his troubled home when he followed his two
older brothers to Trinity College, Cambridge, where his teacher was William
Whewell. Because each of them had won university prizes for poetry the......
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Approximate Pages: 5 (260 words per double-spaced page) |