Tennyson, Alfred, Lord

Bifolium (9 7/8 x 8 in.; 257 x 203 in.) Horizontal and vertical folds, some discoloration, tipped to a slightly larger sheet.

Col. Adolphus Burton (inscription on the mount by his son) — Goodspeed's, Boston — acquired by bookseller Theodore Hoffman.

Wise 82; not in Ashley

Condition as described in catalogue entry.
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First separate edition. One of 1000 copies.

The "charge" took place during the Crimean War on 25 October 1854, and was reported in the Times 13 and 14 November. Tennyson wrote his poem on 2 December, and sent it to John Forster, who printed it in the Examiner 9 December. Tennyson was not satisfied with the text and revised it more than once. As a patriotic gesture he had 1000 copies of his final text printed as a leaflet, to be sent to the Crimea for distribution "among the brave soldiers before Sebastopol." This last version represents the text as it is printed today. It contains 55 lines, with one extra stanza, as opposed to the 46-line text in Maud. The most notable addition is the famous phrase, "Someone had blundered" (which Tennyson dropped from the version printed in Maud). In August, Tennyson wrote to John Forster, "I wish to send out about 1000 slips, and I don't at all want the S. P. G. [Society for the Propagation of the Gospel] or anyone else to send out the version last printed.; it would, I believe, quite disappoint the soldiers."

This leaflet has always been difficult to acquire. There are copies at Harvard, the Morgan Library, and the British Library.

The present copy appears to have been one of those sent to the theater of war, as it is endorsed in pencil at the bottom of the mount as follows: "My father Col. Adolphus Burton C. B. was in the Charge of the Heavy Brigade at Balaclava. G. D. B." In his old age, Tennyson wrote a poem called "The charge of the Heavy Brigade at Balaclava," first publisher in 1885 in Tiresias and Other Poems.