- Edmund Blunden
Edmund Charles Blunden, MC (
November 1 ,1896 -January 20 ,1974 ) was an English poet, author and critic.Life
Born in
London , Blunden was educated atChrist's Hospital , a prestigious independent charity school inSussex , and later atThe Queen's College, Oxford . In 1915, he was commissioned as an officer into theRoyal Sussex Regiment , and served with them right up to the end ofWorld War One , taking part in the actions atYpres and the Somme, and winning theMilitary Cross in the process. His own account of his frequently traumatic experiences was published, in 1928, under the title "Undertones of War".It was after the war that Blunden began his long-standing friendship with
Siegfried Sassoon , who came from the same part ofEngland and whose interests in country pursuits he shared. Blunden also studied the same English Literature course withRobert Graves , and the two were close friends during their time at Oxford together. In 1922, Blunden was awarded the prestigious Hawthornden Prize for Poetry. Although he wrote war poems, he avoided the graphic edge that characterises the work of Sassoon orWilfred Owen , and his memoirs of war service, though beautifully written, have been by some been argued to lack the immediacy of those of Sassoon or Robert Graves.In 1924 Blunden was invited to teach in
Tokyo , and the years 1924-27 were one of two periods he spent working inJapan and the Far East. In 1931, he became a Fellow ofMerton College, Oxford , where he remained until 1944. After that he was a Cultural Adviser inTokyo . In 1968, after a considerable period as the Professor of English Literature at theUniversity of Hong Kong , he returned, on invitation, toOxford University asProfessor of Poetry .Always a
cricket enthusiast, his writing about the game was collected in "Cricket Country", first published by Collins in 1944.He is buried in the churchyard of Holy Trinity Church in
Long Melford ,Suffolk which was where he lived for the remaining years of his life - with his family.On November 11th, 1985, Blunden was among 16 Great War poets commemorated on a slate stone unveiled in
Westminster Abbey 'sPoet's Corner [http://net.lib.byu.edu/english/wwi/poets/poets.html] . The inscription on the stone was written by fellow Great War poet, Wilfred Owen. It reads: "My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity." [http://net.lib.byu.edu/english/wwi/poets/Preface.html]External links
*http://www.1914-18.co.uk/blunden/
*http://www.edmundblunden.org/
* [http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/collections/manuscripts A large collection of Blunden's papers is located at the Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin]
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