Kissane, James, Alfred Tennyson, New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1970.

Kissane's analysis of Tennyson's poems is very involved and clear: he looks at them as poems, not as outdated fragments of history, and he writes about them in a way that is easy to understand. This book is a perfect place to start for the reader who wishes to understand the author as a craftsman.

Tennyson, Charles, "Tennyson as Poet Laureate," in Tennyson, edited by D.J. Palmer, Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1973, pp. 203-225.

Although this essay only mentions "The Charge of the Light Brigade" briefly, almost with embarrassment-as an example among others of "attempted popular poems"-the author gives a good sense of how social forces influenced Tennyson's subject choices in his later years.