![]() ![]() Tennyson adds a footnote to the poem: "Having heard that the brave soldiers before Sebastopol, whom I am proud to call my countrymen, have a liking for my Ballad on the Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava, I have ordered a thousand copies of it to be printed for them." The text contains 55 lines, as opposed to the 46-line text first published in book form in July 1855, in the volume Maud, and Other Poems, Published in The Examiner on 9 December 1854, just six weeks after the event, Tennyson's poem was published as a separate piece and sent to the troops in the Crimea at the behest of Jane, Lady Franklin, wife of the lost explorer Sir John Franklin. According to his grandson Sir Charles Tennyson, Tennyson wrote the poem in only a few minutes after reading the account of it in The Times. The Times followed up with a famous leader on the action the following day. The charge took place on 25 October 1854, but news of the disaster did not reach the British public until the British commanders' dispatches from the front were published in an extraordinary edition of the London Gazette of 12 November 1854. ![]() First separate edition, extremely scarce in this format, one of 1,000 copies published for distribution to the troops in the Crimea, this from the library of Major Adolphus Burton, CB, 5th Dragoon Guards, who commanded the regiment in the Charge of the Heavy Brigade, the successful counterpoint to the disastrous Charge of the Light Brigade in the same action. ![]()
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