However, his next book, "Poems" in 1833 receives unfavourable reviews and he refrained from publishing another book for nearly ten years. Hallam dies that year so suddenly in Vienna and Tennyson began to write "In Memoriam" as an elegy for his lost friend, and this took seventeen years to complete.
"The Lady of Shalott", "The Lotus-eaters" "Morte d'Arthur" and "Ulysses" appeared in 1842 in the two-volume "Poems" and established his reputation as a writer. This made him a very popular poet and in 1845, he received a Civil List pension of ￡200 a year, which helped him relieve his financial difficulties.
In 1850, He marries Emily Sellwood, whom he had already met in 1836, and he is also appointed the poet laureate of England in the same year. His first child is born dead the following year, but his eldest son, Hallam Tennyson, later to become the second Lord Tennyson, is born in 1852. The family moves to settle in Farringford, a house in Freshwater on the Isle of Wight in 1853. In 1869, they move again to Aldworth, Surrey, where he produces some of his best poems in his later years.
As well as many of his major achievements in poetry, he also wrote several plays in the 1870s, including the poetic dramas "Queen Mary" (in 1875), and "Harold" (in 1876).
He is made a Baron in 1883, but dies nine years later, on 6th October, after a long illness, at the age of 83. Tennyson suffered from extreme short-sightedness and he also had a longlife fear of mental illness, for several men in his family had a mild form of epilepsy, which was then thought a shameful disease. However despite how unhealthy they seemed to be, he lived for a very long time for a Victorian man, like most of his family members.
Many of his famous poems include "In Memoriam" (1850) ; "Charge of the Light Brigade" in which he exposes the foolish mistake made by the British military when they attacked cannons with the cavalry ; "Enoch Arden" (1864) ; and "Idylls Of The King" (1859-1885), which he dedicated to Prince Albert who showed his admiration for Tennyson’s poems which helped him to solidify his popularity, and he is often regarded as the chief representative of the victorian age in poetry.
