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Lord Alfred Tennyson Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892), English poet often regarded as the chief representative of the Victorian age in poetry. Tennyson succeeded Wordsworth as Poet Laureate in 1850. Alfred, Lord Tennyson was born on August 5, 1809 in Somersby, Lincolnshire. His next book, Poems (1833), received unfavorable reviews, and Tennyson ceased to publish for nearly ten years. After marrying Emily Sellwood, whom he had already met in 1836, the couple settled in Farringford, a house in Freshwater on the Isle of Wight in 1853. Among Tennyson's major poetic achievements is the elegy mourning the death of his friend Arthur Hallam, "In Memoriam" (1850). In the 1870s Tennyson wrote several plays, among them the poetic dramas Queen Mary (1875) and Harold (1876). Tennyson died at Aldwort on October 6, 1892 and was buried in the Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey. The above biography is copyrighted.