Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (1809-1892), Poet Laureate

Sitter in 86 portraits
Born in Somersby, Lincolnshire, Tennyson was educated in Louth before attending Trinity College, Cambridge. His early life and poetry was greatly affected by the unexpected death of his close friend and prospective brother-in-law, Arthur Hallam, to whom Tennyson dedicated his 'In Memoriam'. Some of the best-known poems include 'The Charge of the Light Brigade', 'The Lady of Shalott' and the 'Idylls of the King', while those in dialect retain the language of his Lincolnshire youth. Tennyson was Britain's longest-serving Poet Laureate, from 1850 until his death forty-two years later. A great favourite of Queen Victoria, she awarded him a barony in 1883.