During the 1850s, when Great Britain was engaged in the Crimean War, 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,[1] 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".[2]
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.[3] The poem was written in a few minutes on December 2 of the same year, based
on a recollection of that account;[4] Tennyson wrote other similar poems, like "Riflemen, form in
town and in Shrine" in a similar manner.[5]