Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) Ulysses LINKS No links found. BIOGRAPHY Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) Tennyson was born in Lincolnshire and attended Trinity College, Cambridge (1828–1831), where he won the Chancellor's Medal for Poetry in 1829. His 1842 collection, Poems, was not well received, but he gained prominence and the Queen's favor with the 1850 publication of In Memoriam, an elegy written over seventeen years and inspired by the untimely death of his friend Arthur Hallam in 1833. That same year he finally married Emily Sellwood, after a fourteen-year engagement. In 1850, he was named poet laureate of England after Wordsworth's death. His works include Maud and Other Poems (1855) and Idylls of the King (1859), based on the legendary exploits of King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table.