Alfred, Lord Tennyson, was born at Somersby in Lincolnshire, of which place his father was rector. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was contemporary with and made the acquaintance of an unusual number of men afterwards highly distinguished. Tennyson's most intimate friend was Arthur Henry Hallam (1811-1833), son of the historian, and himself a writer of high promise, both in verse and prose. The literary remains published after Hallam's death can only be regarded as the promise of something that might have been. There is nothing great in them, but there is evidence of power which would probably have led the writer to greatness. Dying so young however, Hallam is memorable not so much for anything he did himself, as for his influence on his friend, and especially for the fact that he inspired _In Memoriam_. During his course at Cambridge Tennyson won the Chancellor's prize with the poem of _Timbuctoo_, a piece above the ordinary prize-poem level, but not in itself remarkable. Still earlier, in 1827, he had joined with his brother Charles in a small volume entitled _Poems by Two Brothers_. But these compositions were merely boyish, and Tennyson's first noteworthy contribution to literature was the _Poems, chiefly Lyrical_, of 1830. This was followed by another volume bearing the date 1833, and entitled simply _Poems_. Then came nine years of almost complete silence, broken, in 1842, by two volumes entitled once more, _Poems_. These mark the end of Tennyson's first period of authorship. In the volumes of 1830 and 1833 we may look upon him as in many respects an apprentice in poetry; in those of 1842 he has passed far beyond mere apprenticeship. _The Princess_ (1847) indicates a change in his method and in the nature of his ambitions; while _In Memoriam_ (1850), though it has its roots in the early life of Tennyson, and was in part at least written when the grief it commemorates was fresh, is connected by its subject-matter rather with Tennyson's later work and with the interests of the second half of the century. In the year when _In Memoriam_ was published Tennyson succeeded Wordsworth in the laureateship, an office which he held for a longer period than any of his predecessors. His appointment was the public recognition of him as the chief poet of his time.