Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) was the son of a country clergyman and a clergyman’s daughter. The family was relatively well off until they invested, after his father’s death, in a business enterprise that failed and swallowed up most of their savings. When he was 17, Alfred and two of his older brothers published a collection of their verse, and three years later he was awarded the Chancellor’s Gold Medal at Cambridge for one of his poems. The following year, 1830, saw the publication of his first full collection, Poems Chiefly Lyrical. In 1850, already England’s most popular living poet, he was appointed Poet Laureate, a position he held until his death in 1892. The year he was appointed Poet Laureate, Tennyson published “Ring Out, Wild Bells,” which is part of his long poem “In Memoriam,” Tennyson’s elegy for the dearest friend of his youth, Arthur Henry Hallam, who had been engaged to Alfred’s sister until his untimely death at the age of 22. In a Swedish translation, “Ring Out, Wild Bells” is recited annually at the national New Year’s Eve celebration in Stockholm, a tradition that began in 1897, five years after the poet’s death.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) was the son of a country clergyman and a clergyman’s daughter. The family was relatively well off until they invested, after his father’s death, in a business enterprise that failed and swallowed up most of their savings. When he was 17, Alfred and two of his older brothers published a collection of their verse, and three years later he was awarded the Chancellor’s Gold Medal at Cambridge for one of his poems. The following year, 1830, saw the publication of his first full collection, Poems Chiefly Lyrical. In 1850, already England’s most popular living poet, he was appointed Poet Laureate, a position he held until his death in 1892. The year he was appointed Poet Laureate, Tennyson published “Ring Out, Wild Bells,” which is part of his long poem “In Memoriam,” Tennyson’s elegy for the dearest friend of his youth, Arthur Henry Hallam, who had been engaged to Alfred’s sister until his untimely death at the age of 22. In a Swedish translation, “Ring Out, Wild Bells” is recited annually at the national New Year’s Eve celebration in Stockholm, a tradition that began in 1897, five years after the poet’s death.
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