Priestley's Victoria's Heyday (1974) captures the spirit of Queen Victoria's reign in year-by-year chapters, including an in-depth discussion of the Crimean War. Priestley, a famous novelist, uses pictures, gossip, and a fun, lightly sarcastic voice to tell the tale.

John D. Jump edited a 1967 volume called Ten nyson: the Critical Heritage that almost every student of Tennyson eventually runs across. It contains critical essays dating from Tennyson's first publications up to today, showing how attitudes have altered during the past 150 years. Especially interesting is the way Tennyson was characterized by H.A. Taine in 1864 as the perfect symbol of stuffy Victorian England; poet A.C. Swinburne's touchy response to Taine, in 1868; and R.H. Hutton's 1888 reply to Swinburne.

Tennyson's correspondences have been collected and published in three volumes. The volume that covers the Crimean War and the period of time when...