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Adaptations The Charge of the Light Brigade (1912), Captain Blood (1935) Similar Works by Alfred Tennyson - 1st Baron Tennyson, Other books | ||
"The Charge of the Light Brigade" is an 1854 narrative poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson about the Charge of the Light Brigade at the Battle of Balaclava during the Crimean War. He was the Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom at the time he wrote the poem.
Contents
The poem was written on December 2, 1854, and it was published on December 9, 1854 in The Examiner.
Composition
During the 1850s, when England was engaged in the Crimean War and feared invasion from Russia, Tennyson wrote several patriotic poems under various pseudonyms. Scholars speculate that Tennyson created his pen names because these verses used a traditional structure Tennyson employed in his earlier career but suppressed during the 1840s, worrying that poems like "The Charge of the Light Brigade" (which he initially signed only A.T.) "might prove not to be decorous for a poet laureate".
The poem was written after the Light Cavalry Brigade suffered great casualties in the Battle of Balaclava. Tennyson wrote the poem based on two articles published in The Times: the first, published in November, 1854, provided the phrase "Some one has blunder'd" and thus the meter of the poem. The poem was written in a few minutes on December 2 of the same year, based on a recollection of that account; Tennyson wrote other similar poems, like "Riflemen, form in town and in Shrine" in a similar manner.
Later Versions
Tennyson made revisions to the poem due to criticisms by the American poet Frederick Goddard Tuckerman and others; these were published in Tennyson's volume Maud and Other Poems. These changes were criticized by several, including both Tennyson and Tuckerman.
Tennyson sent a version of the poem, after correcting the revisions in Maud, at the soldiers' request. There, it was distributed in pamphlet form at the behest of Jane, Lady Franklin. The same version was used for the second printing of Maud.
Tennyson recited this poem onto a wax cylinder in 1890.
Kipling's postscript
Rudyard Kipling's poem "The Last of the Light Brigade" (1891), written some 40 years after the appearance of "The Charge of the Light Brigade," focuses on the terrible hardships faced in old age by veterans of the Crimean War, as exemplified by the cavalry men of the Light Brigade. Its purpose was to shame the British public into offering financial assistance.