Context
Alfred, Lord Tennyson was one of the most important poets of the Victorian period. He was the poet laureate - the country's official poet - from 1850 until his death in 1892, making him the longest ever serving laureate.
Tennyson's early life
Alfred Tennyson was born in Lincoln in 1809, as the Napoleonic WarsA series of conflicts between the French - led by Emperor Napoleon - and various European countries. raged in Europe. He was the fourth of 12 children. While he came from respectable stock - his father was a clergyman -Tennyson鈥檚 early home life was unstable.
His father suffered from mental illness and, disappointed by his station in life, he took to drink and drugs. Many of Tennyson鈥檚 siblings had mental breakdowns, and Alfred himself occasionally fell into unexplained trances.
His fear, which turned out to be unfounded, was that he had inherited epilepsy from his father.
Tennyson鈥檚 unhappy childhood helps explain the themes of murder, madness, conflict, greed and loveless marriage that run through his work.
Perhaps to escape a harsh reality, Alfred started writing poetry from a young age. He published his first poems while still a student at Cambridge.
Cambridge
Here he spent perhaps the happiest years of his life 鈥 he was good looking, clever, funny and popular with a close group of peers.
At Cambridge, Alfred met a brilliant scholar, Arthur Henry Hallam.
Dark years
The pair were intensely close, and Arthur was engaged to Alfred鈥檚 sister. But four years after meeting, this warm friendship ended when Arthur died suddenly.
Always fragile, Tennyson lamented, 鈥淚 suffered what seemed to me to shatter all my life so that I desired to die rather than to live.鈥
For anyone who knew Tennyson through the second half of the 1830s and for most of the 1840s, it must have seemed that he was going off the rails.
He moved about from place to place, staying with family and friends or in cheap London hotels. But despite this erratic, nomadic lifestyle, and his heavy drinking and smoking, he was still writing.
Recognition
In 1850 Tennyson published In Memoriam AHH. The poem was dedicated to his late friend Arthur Hallam.
It was a favourite of Queen Victoria, who said the book helped to comfort her after her husband Albert's death.
With Victoria's patronage, Tennyson was acclaimed as the greatest poet of his day and was appointed poet laureate, succeeding William Wordsworth.
The Charge of the Light Brigade was written at the height of his fame in 1854.