About the Life of Alfred Lord Tennyson Quiz

Answer: rector

His father was a country rector who experienced much mental deterioration in the later stages of his life. The local people were often afraid of his moody, violent outbursts. George, Tennyson's father, had been disinherited by his own father, a rich landowner.

Answer: died in a private mental asylum

Alfred mourned the untimely death of his brother. But Alfred wrote and published poetry with his two elder brothers Frederick and Charles.

Answer: the Boss

Many writers and famous people felt obliged to visit Tennyson during his life. Whitman appreciated the lyricism of Tennyson's poetry. Other American literati like Ralph Waldo Emerson admired Tennyson's poetry.

Answer: 1850

He became a baron in 1884. As early as the 1840's, Thomas Carlyle and other men of letters managed to obtain a government pension for Tennyson. Tennyson discharged his duties as poet laureate with diligence, even writing banal poems when royalty from other nations visited Britain.

Answer: Trinity College, Cambridge University

He won the Chancellor's Prize Medal in 1829 for one of his poems and earlier published poems with his brother Charles in 1827. In college, Alfred wrote poetry with his dear friend Arthur Henry Hallam.

Answer: Arthur Henry Hallam

The complete title of the famous poem is "In Memoriam A.H.H." from 1850. Arthur Henry Hallam was an esteemed poet at Trinity College but died due to complications from fever and a stroke. Arthur, Tennyson's closest friend in college, died young and had courted Alfred's sister Emily.

Answer: depression

Depression ran in his family, including his father and his brother Edward. He can be seen as a connoisseur of heartbreak. Many of his poems express through lyrics a muted longing and the losses of love and of faith. Depression affected many Victorian writers like Charles Dickens and Thomas Carlyle.

Answer: The Lotus-Eaters

"The Lotus-Eaters" makes references to Odysseus, who encounters the lotus-eaters in "The Odyssey" by the ancient poet Homer. In this poem, travelers consume poppies, containing an opiate, which lulls them to sleep and to have visions.

Answer: Crossing the Bar

"Crossing the Bar" was one of Tennyson's last poems, written in 1889--just three years before he died. The poem describes his placid and accepting view of death. This short poem contains the metaphor of the sandbar which symbolizes a divide between life and death.

Answer: The Charge of the Light Brigade

The sound recording is not good. The grooved lines in the recording disc caused the recording to sound scratchy. Phonographs had been around since 1860 but Thomas Edison popularized them.