Lord Tennyson, English poet, c 1886

Lord Tennyson, English poet, c 1886. Portrait photograph by Henry Herschel Hay Cameron (1852-1911) of the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892). Tennyson was Poet Laureate and was made a peer. One of his best-known works is 'The Charge of the Light Brigade'. His Arthurian epic 'Idylls of the King', first published in 1859, was a critique on what he perceived as the shallow values of his own time. The photographic portraits of Cameron's mother, Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879), also a photographer, are considered among the finest in the early history of photography. She and Tennyson both lived at Freshwater on the Isle of Wight. ©SSPL/NMeM/Royal Photographic Society