The Victorian Era

How Did Tennyson Become Poet Laureate?

Article · Literature & Theatre · The Victorian Era, 1837–1901

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Alfred Tennyson became Poet Laureate in 1850, following the death of William Wordsworth, who had held the office since 1843. His appointment was a popular decision, widely seen as recognition of his standing as the foremost poet of his generation. Tennyson was the third Poet Laureate to serve during the Victorian era, after Robert Southey and William Wordsworth, and he was the longest-serving, holding the office for almost forty-two years, from 1850 to his death in 1892. The history of Tennyson as Poet Laureate is examined in Victorian Poetry. The context of the period is set out in Victorian Literature, Theatre, and the Written Word.

The Office of Poet Laureate

The office of Poet Laureate is one of the oldest honours in British literary life. Ben Jonson received a royal pension under James I, but the office was established in its modern form in 1668, when Charles II appointed John Dryden. The Poet Laureate was originally the monarch’s poet, charged with writing odes for royal occasions, and was paid a pension out of the royal household. By the nineteenth century the obligation to produce birthday and New Year odes had lapsed, but the laureateship remained a position of great honour and one of the most prestigious in British literary culture.

The Poets Laureate of the Victorian era were Robert Southey, who had held the office since 1813 and died in 1843; William Wordsworth, who held it from 1843 to 1850; Alfred Tennyson, who held it from 1850 to 1892; and Alfred Austin, who was appointed in 1896 after a four-year vacancy. Samuel Rogers, the elderly banker-poet, was offered the laureateship on Wordsworth’s death but declined it on account of his age.

The Life of Alfred Tennyson

Alfred Tennyson was born on 6 August 1809 in Somersby, Lincolnshire, the fourth of twelve children of George Clayton Tennyson, the rector of Somersby, and his wife Elizabeth Fytche Tennyson. Tennyson was educated at Louth Grammar School and afterwards at home by his father, before entering Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1827. At Cambridge, Tennyson met Arthur Henry Hallam, the son of the historian Henry Hallam, and formed a close friendship with him, a friendship that was ended by Hallam’s sudden death in Vienna in 1833. The death of Hallam was one of the formative events of Tennyson’s life, and Tennyson’s greatest poem, In Memoriam A. H. H., published in 1850, was written in memory of Hallam.

Tennyson’s first published work, Poems by Two Brothers, appeared in 1827 with contributions from his brothers Charles and Frederick. His first independent volume, Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, was published in 1830, and a further volume, Poems, followed at the end of 1832, only to receive a hostile review from John Wilson Croker in the Quarterly Review, which Tennyson found deeply upsetting. He published no new volume for nearly ten years, until Poems (1842), which included Locksley Hall, The Two Voices, and The Vision of Sin, together with revised versions of The Lady of Shalott and The Palace of Art. The 1842 Poems was a critical and commercial success, and Tennyson’s reputation was established.

The Appointment as Poet Laureate

The death of William Wordsworth on 23 April 1850 left the office of Poet Laureate vacant, and the appointment lay with the Prime Minister, Lord John Russell. The succession was debated in the press and in literary circles, and the names canvassed included Samuel Rogers, Leigh Hunt, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Tennyson. The office was first offered to Rogers, then eighty-seven, who declined because of his age. Tennyson’s claim had been greatly strengthened by the publication of In Memoriam in May 1850, a poem much admired at court, not least by Prince Albert.

The office was accordingly offered to Tennyson, and his appointment was confirmed on 19 November 1850. The appointment was widely praised in the press as a fitting tribute to the genius and achievement of the leading poet of the day. When Tennyson was presented at court, he wore the same court suit that had been lent to Wordsworth before him by Samuel Rogers.

The Laureateship of Tennyson

Tennyson held the office of Poet Laureate for almost forty-two years, from 1850 until his death in 1892, the longest tenure in the history of the office, and he used the office to produce a number of important poems for public and royal occasions. These included To the Queen (1851), his dedicatory verses to Queen Victoria; the Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington (1852); The Charge of the Light Brigade (1854), written within weeks of the battle of Balaclava; A Welcome to Alexandra (1863), greeting the Danish bride of the Prince of Wales; the dedication of Idylls of the King to the memory of Prince Albert (1862); and the ode On the Jubilee of Queen Victoria (1887). Alongside these official poems he continued to publish major independent work, including Maud (1855), the Idylls of the King (1859 to 1885), Enoch Arden (1864), and the historical dramas Queen Mary (1875), Harold (1876), and Becket (1884). In 1884 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Tennyson, the first poet to be ennobled for his writing.

Conclusion

Alfred Tennyson became Poet Laureate in 1850 on the death of William Wordsworth, after Samuel Rogers had declined the office, and he held it for almost forty-two years, the longest tenure of any Poet Laureate. His appointment was widely seen as recognition of the foremost poet of the generation, and his laureateship produced some of the most famous occasional poetry in the language, from the Wellington ode to The Charge of the Light Brigade. The history of Tennyson as Poet Laureate is examined in Victorian Poetry and in Victorian Literature, Theatre, and the Written Word.