It’s the birthday of Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892), considered by many to be the greatest poet of his generation and the quintessence of the Victorian age.

Tennyson was born in Lincolnshire, England, the fourth of twelve children. His father was a bitter, mentally unstable, hard drinking rector who poisoned the atmosphere of the home but did manage to give Tennyson a good literary education at home, as well as the requisite miserable experience at a British grammar school. Many members of the family struggled with drug addiction, alcoholism, and severe mental breakdowns, and additionally Tennyson was afraid for 40 years that he had inherited his father’s epilepsy. Tennyson wrote from a young age to escape his unhappiness and published his first book, Poems by Two Brothers (1827), before he was quite 18. (In spite of the title, the book contained poems by Tennyson and two of his brothers, which I strongly believe—correct me if I’m wrong—adds up to three brothers. I’ve been over the math several times. This is going to keep me up nights.)

Tennyson finally found some happiness at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he made friends with his college peers and won a chancellor’s gold medal for his poem “Timbuctoo.” He also met one of the greatest friends of his life, Arthur Henry Hallam, himself a Brilliant Young Man. All was splendid until Tennyson’s father died and he had to leave Cambridge, along with two of his brothers, because of family debt and, well, no signs that their expensive education was going to lead to any careers. Life tanked, but Tennyson stayed true to his poetry and in 1832 published his third volume, Poems, which contained some Seriously Great Works, such as “The Lady of Shalott” (not to be confused with the shallot, a seriously great member of the onion family) and “The Lotos-Eaters.” Reviews, however, were terrible. Hallam, by then engaged to Tennyson’s sister Emily, and other friends offered support.

The next year Hallam died suddenly and Tennyson and his sister were both devastated. Tennyson was moved to write some of his best poems (“Morte d’Arthur,” “Break, break, break,” and like that). Things continued to tank: Tennyson was lonely, financially strapped, and afraid to marry because he thought he would pass epilepsy on to any children he had. He moved around a lot and drank. And then, in 1848, things got better: Tennyson met a doctor at a hydropathic hospital who reassured him that he did not have epilepsy but a type of gout. Tennyson finally felt free to marry—he’d been in love with a woman named Emily Sellwood—and in 1850 he did just that, as well as publishing his greatly successful volume In Memoriam; he also became poet laureate, taking over from Wordsworth, who had recently died. He eventually became good friends with Queen Victoria (as much as anyone did, anyway), and was also close frenemies with prime minister William Gladstone going back many years: both men were frankly jealous of one another’s friendship with Hallam, to the point that one would occasionally unfriend the other on Facebook.

(Five life points if you can spot the one untrue thing in the previous paragraph.)

To summarize: Tennyson ended up with a happy (if perhaps staid) marriage, two sons (a third died), big heaping buttery handfuls of literary success, and financial stability, and he bucked poetic tradition by living to the ripe old age of 83 and died surrounded by family. He also wore a cloak in his later years, so how cool is that?

Tennyson’s poem, “Break, break, break,” begins:

Break, break, break,

On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!

And I would that my tongue could utter

The thoughts that arise in me.

Have a splendid if landlocked Monday, stay scrupulously honest to the data, and remember: sometimes life gets better.