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 on 13 November 1854, contained the sentence "The British soldier will do his duty, even to certain death, and is not paralyzed by the feeling that he is the victim of some hideous blunder," the last three words of which provided the inspiration for his phrase "Some one had blunder'd.

[citation needed] At the suggestion of Jane, Lady Franklin, Tennyson sent a thousand copies of a single-sheet version of the poem to be distributed among soldiers in the Crimea.

His poem 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.