Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (1809-1892) was, and remains, one of the most popular English poets. He held the position of poet laureate for much of Queen Victoria's reign, from 1850 until his death in 1892. The ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’ is one of Alfred Tennyson's most well-known poems. It was written as a response to a report of the battle of Balaklava on 25 October 1854 published in The Times. The battle included the ill-fated charge of the Light Brigade, in which the brigade suffered heavy losses without any decisive gains, due to miscommunication in the chain of command. The poem was first published a few weeks later in the newspaper The Examiner, on 9 December 1854. It was later published in Tennyson's collection of poems 'Maud and other poems'. In the first edition of 1855, the famous line ‘Some one had blunder’d’ was omitted from the poem after ‘criticism of two or three London friends’, but it was reinstated in this, the 1861 edition. This copy belonged to Queen Victoria, and bears her signature.