Alfred Tennyson was born at Somersby, a small hamlet among the Lincolnshire wolds, on August 6th, 1809.  His father, the Rev. George Clayton Tennyson, the vicar of Somersby, was a man of large and cultivated intellect, interested in poetry, mathematics, painting, music, and architecture, but somewhat harsh and austere in manner, and subject to fits of gloomy depression, during which his presence was avoided by his family; he was sincerely devoted to them, however, and himself supervised their education.  His mother, Elizabeth Fytche, the daughter of the Rev Stephen Fytche of Louth, was a kind-hearted, gentle, refined woman, beloved by her family and friends.  Her influence over her sons and daughters was unbounded, and over none more so than Alfred, who in after life recognized to the full what he owed to his mother.

The family was large, consisting of twelve sons and daughters, of whom the eldest died in infancy.  Alfred was the fourth child, his brothers Frederick and Charles being older than he.  The home life was a very happy one.  The boys and girls were all fond of books, and their games partook of the nature of the books they had been reading.  They were given to writing, and in this they were encouraged by their father, who proved himself a wise and discriminating critic.  Alfred early showed signs of his poetic bent; at the age of twelve he had written an epic of four thousand lines, and even before this a tragedy and innumerable poems in blank verse.  He was not encouraged, however, to preserve these specimens of his early powers, and they are now lost.

Alfred attended for a time a small school near his home, but at the age of seven he was sent to the Grammar School at Louth.  While at Louth he lived with his grandmother, but his days at school were not happy, and he afterwards looked back over them with almost a shudder.  Before he was twelve he returned home, and began his preparation for the university under his father’s care.  His time was not all devoted to serious study, but was spent in roaming through his father’s library, devouring the great classics of ancient and modern times, and in writing his own poems.  The family each summer removed to Mablethorpe on the Lincolnshire coast.  Here Alfred learned to love the sea in all its moods, a love which lasted through his life.

In 1827, after Frederick had entered Cambridge, the two brothers, Charles and Alfred, being in want of pocket money, resolved to publish a volume of poems.  They made a selection from their numerous poems, and offered the book to a bookseller in Louth, For some unknown reason he accepted the book, and soon after, it was published under the title, Poems by Two Brothers.  There were in reality three brothers, as some of Frederick’s poems were included in the volume.  The brothers were promised 20 pounds, but more than one half of this sum they had to take out in books.  With the balance they went on a triumphal expedition to the sea, rejoicing in the successful launching of their first literary effort.