Alfred Tennyson Was Born August 6th

Alfred Tennyson was born August 6th, 1809, at Somersby, Lincolnshire, fourth of twelve children of George and Elizabeth (Fytche) Tennyson. The poet's grandfather had violated tradition by making his younger son, Charles, his heir, and arranging for the poet's father to enter the ministry. (See the Tennyson Family Tree.) The contrast of his own family's relatively straitened circumstances to the great wealth of his aunt Elizabeth Russell and uncle Charles Tennyson (who lived in castles!) made Tennyson feel particularly impoverished and led him to worry about money all his life. He also had a lifelong fear of mental illness, for several men in his family had a mild form of epilepsy, which was then thought a shameful disease. His father and brother Arthur made their cases worse by excessive drinking. His brother Edward had to be confined in a mental institution after 1833, and he himself spent a few weeks under doctors' care in 1843. In the late twenties his father's physical and mental condition worsened, and he became paran oid, abusive , and violent. Arth ur Hallam's was the most important of these friendships. Hallam, another precociously brilliant Victorian young man like Rober t Brown ing, John Stuart Mill, and Matth ew Arnol d, was uni for mly reco gnized by his contemporaries (including William Gladstone, his best friend at Eton) as having unusual promise William Wordsworth was born April 7, 1770, in Cockermouth, Cumberland, to John and Anne (Cookson) Wordsworth, the second of their five children. His father was law agent and rent collector for Lord Lonsdale, and the family was fairly well off. After his mother's death in 1778 he was sent to Hawkshead Grammar School, near Windermere; in 1787 he went up to St. John's College, Cambridge. He enjoyed hiking: during the "long" (i.e., summer) vacation of 1788 he tramped around Cumberland county; two years later went on a walking tour of France, Switzerland, and Germany; and in 1791, after graduation, trekked through Wales. His enthusias m for the French Revolution took him to France again in 1791, where he had an affair with Annette Vallon, who bore him an illegitimate daughter, Caroline, in 1792. Having run out of money, Wordsworth returned to England the following year, and the Anglo-French war, following the Reign of Terror, preve nted his return for nine years. Words worth 's literary career began with Descriptive Sketches (1793) and reached an early climax before the turn of the century, with Lyrical Ballads. His powers peaked with Poems in Two Volumes (1807), and his reputation continued to grow; even his harshest reviewers recognized his popularity and the originality. Robert Frost (1874-1963) was born in San Francisco, California. His father William Frost, a journalist and an ardent Democrat, died when Frost was about eleven years old. His Scottish mother, the former Isabelle Moody, resumed her career as a schoolteacher to support her family. The family lived in Lawr ence, Mass achus etts , with Frost's pate rnal grandfat her, Will iam Pres cott Frost, who gave his grandson a good schooling. In 1892 Frost graduated from a high school and attended Darthmouth College for a few months. Over the next ten years he held a number of jobs. Frost wor ked amo ng others in a textil e mill and taugh t Latin at his mother's school in Methuen, Massachusetts. In 1894 the New York Independent published Frost's poem 'My Butterfly' and he had five poems privately printed. Frost worked as a teacher and continued to write and publish his poems in magazines. In 1895 he married a former schoolmate, Elinor White; they had six children. From 1897 to 1899 Frost studied at Harvard, but left without receiving a degree. He moved to Derry, New Hampshire, working there as a cobbler, farmer, and teacher at Pinkerton Academy and at the state normal school in Plymo uth. When he sent his poems to The Atlantic Mont hly they were returned with this note: "We regret that The Atlantic has no place for your vigorous verse." At the time of his death on January 29, 1963, Frost was considered a kind of unofficial poet laureate of the US. "I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover's quarrel with the world," Frost once said. In his poems Frost depicted the fields and farms of his surroundings, observing the details of rural life, which hide unive rsal meaning . His independ ent, elusive, half humorous view of the world produced such remarks as "I never take my side in a quarrel", or "I'm never serious except when I'm

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Alfred Tennyson Was Born August 6th