Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892) born on August 6, 1809, remains one of Britain’s most popular poets; he served as the Poet Laureate from 1850 until his death in 1892, the longest tenure of any English Poet Laureate. In 1883, he was elevated to the peerage, after twice declining the honour. In 1884, Queen Victoria created him Baron Tennyson, of Aldworth in the County of Sussex and of Freshwater in the Isle of Wight. Tennyson was the first author to be raised to the British peerage for his writing. His father was an Anglican clergyman and his mother was a vicar’s daughter. Tennyson’s first major award, the Chancellor’s Gold Medal, was bestowed in 1829 while he was a student at Cambridge, for his poem ‘Timbuktu” when he was 20 years old.  But he had to leave Cambridge before taking his degree because of the death of his father in 1831. He spent the…