Alfred Tennyson was an English poet who served as Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1850 until his death in 1892. He was born in 1809 in Lincolnshire, England and came from a family of 12 children. He studied at Trinity College, Cambridge where he joined a secret society and befriended Arthur Hallam. Tennyson published his first collection of poems in 1830 which included some of his most famous works. The death of his friend Hallam in 1833 inspired Tennyson to write some of his masterpieces, including "In Memoriam A.H.H.", an elegy for Hallam that took Tennyson 17 years to complete. Tennyson was appointed Poet Laureate in 1850 and remained one