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Edmund Blunden

The information on this page is a biographical sketch for Edmund Blunden; offering the reader a basic knowledge of his life and work. There are some suggestions at the bottom of this page for resources and links that should help those looking for additional information.

"Edmund Blunden (1896-1974) was the longest serving First World War poet, and saw continuous action in the front line, between 1916-18. His life-long friend Siegfried Sassoon maintained that Blunden was the ‘poet of the war most lastingly obsessed by it.’ The war remained a backdrop to his prolific writing which leaves a continuing testimony to the after-effects of war on the human mind." (edmundblunden.org)

"As a war poet he offers a different perspective compared with other war poets. Desmond Graham writes that he is concerned overall with 'war's haunting of the mind'; his collected war poems bear this out and if we want an idea of what it was like to fight and survive WW1 then we can go to Blunden to give it to us." (warpoets.org)

Edmund Blunden: born November 1, 1896 in London and died January 20, 1974 in Long Melford, Suffolk, England.

Father: Charles Edmund 'Pugg' (1871-1951)

He was a Schoolmaster, church organist and choir master. (Webb, 11) Much of his professional life he seems to have had difficulty with the family finances. His was a large family and providing for nine children must have seemed overwhelming at times. There are signs of depression and escapism present in his life. For example, he would drink and spend time in pubs playing games even when the finances at home were in disarray.

Mother: Georgina Margaret 'Mugg' [née Tyler] (1868-1967)

She began her professional life as a school teacher where she met Charles Edmund Blunden at her first position. Charles was the headmaster of St John's, Firzroy Square, a primary school. (Webb, 8) "She was intelligent and well read ('Her mind was a pantheon of wonderful men and women, from Florence Nightingale to Blondin and Captain Webb, and earls and bishops') and she became Edmund's confidante for life."(Webb, 12)

Siblings:

• Charlotte 'Lottie' (1899-?)
• Gilbert (1900-?)
• Phyllis 'Figg' (1901-?)
• Lancelot (1902-?)
• Geoffrey (1904-?)
• Anne (1906-?)
• Frances (1909-?)
• Hubert (1910-?)

Spouse:

• Mary Blunden, [née Daines] (1900-1956) Married on June 1, 1918 and divorced in 1931.
• Sylva Blunden, [née Nahabedian] later Norman ( -1972) Married on July 5, 1933 and divorced in February of 1942. Sylva was also an author and worked with Edmund on the novel We'll Shift Our Ground (January 1933).
• Claire Margaret Poynting ( - ) Married on May 29, 1945 (Claire an Blunden had an ongoing affair since the Autumn of 1939).

Children:

• Joy (1919-1919) Died suddenly while visiting Edmund's parents. The cause was possibly due to infected cow's milk; she was five weeks old. (edmundblunden.org) Blunden wrote the poems: The Child's Grave and To Joy in her memory. To Joy was later set by Gerald Finzi.
• Clare (1920- ) later Clare Ross
• John (1922 - )
  
• Margaret (1946- )
• Lucy (1948 - )
• Frances (1950- )
• Catherine (1956- )

Education:

Edmund Blunden began his education at the Grammar School in Yalding, Kent. In 1909 he was moved to a boarding school located in Christ's Hospital in Horsham, Sussex. Blunden it seems had won a Classics scholarship which afforded him the tuition needed for Christ's Hospital. The school was for boys that had come from families of modest means. He next moved to Queens College, Oxford but cut short his education when he volunteered in 1915 for the Army. (edmundblunden.org)

After completing his military service Blunden returned to school but not to Queen's College instead his choice of school this time was Oxford University. With a change of schools also came a switch in his major field of study to that of English literature. Blunden was now married and had started a family and thus his education was not his top priority. He had very limited means and so to support his young family he took a job in London with The Athenaeum and The Nation (New Statesman). (edmundblunden.org)

Influences on Blunden's Style of Writing:

Edmund Blunden was influenced by many things in his life but the single event that most changed his outlook was World War I. Having fought both at Ypres and the Somme he distinguished himself as a soldier and was awarded the Military Cross for bravery. Many of his works directly speak of the war.

Blunden from early youth appreciated nature and specifically the British countryside. This love of nature was always present in his writing. Also from his youth he developed an affection for the printed word. His taste in literature was a bit eclectic but one could say it simply shows signs of a curious mind. As one of nine children, and also having the distinction of being the oldest, Blunden found ways to amuse himself. One of these must have been to loose himself in a good book.

Blunden's early prospects for a good education might have seemed dim due to the size of the family had it not been for his hard work. His hard work was rewarded with a scholarship to Christ's Hospital. Blunden was extremely proud of his education from Christ's Hospital. He later wrote fondly of all the great memories he had from his days there in his book, Christ's Hospital: A Retrospect (1923).

After his general education was completed at Christ's Hospital, Blunden was given a scholarship to Queen's College, Oxford. He began his studies there in 1915. His major at first was the Classics but eventually changed his major to English literature when he returned to school after serving during World War I. Though his education was left incomplete with less than two years in college, he drew on that knowledge for the remainder of his life.

Another influence on Blunden's style came from his research and preservation of the poets, John Clare, Wilfred Owen, and Ivor Gurney as well as the Romantic writers, Leigh Hunt, Charles Lamb, and Percy Bysshe Shelley. (Raleigh, 31) Without Blunden's intervention and research the work of these men may have remained unknown, still today. Blunden considered Thomas Hardy a pillar of English literature and specifically thought Hardy's The Dynasts was "the finest literary dramatization of the era in English." (Raleigh, 32) Blunden came to this conclusion after he had carefully analyzed the work. His published results can be found in: Thomas Hardy (1941).

Edmund Blunden was influenced either directly or indirectly from his travels and the exposure to different cultures, customs, and languages. We find evidence of this in his: The Bonadventure a journal of his voyage to South America (December 1922); Japanese Garland (September 1928); A Hong Kong House (September 1962).

Lastly, he reportedly had a good sense of humor and was amused quite frequently by attempts to translate from one language to another while living in Asia. Though this may seem minor, to one who lived with the scars of war ever present in much of his writing, it surely helped balance his life and kept him grounded with the common man.

Work Experiences:

• Blunden began professional life writing poems and prose.
• After the war Blunden returned to school but left struggling with his finances.
• He took a job in 1920 at The Athenaeum, a journal publication.
• His financial struggles continued and on March 28, 1924 Blunden left England in order to relocate to Tokyo. He assumed the duties of Professor of English at Tokyo University (1924-1927). (edmundblunden.org) Unfortunately Blunden's wife, Mary would not agree to move to Tokyo and so she and their two surviving children remained in Suffolk. (edmundblunden.org)
• After returning to England in 1927 Blunden published Undertones of War in November of 1928. Undertones of War was so successful that by December, just one month later, the publisher had to reprint the book three times. (edmundblunden.org)
• In February of 1930 Blunden took a one year appointment as an assistant editor at The Nation, a journal publication located in Hawstead in Suffolk. (edmundblunden.org)
• In March of 1931 Blunden published The Poems of Wilfred Owen and in October he began a "fellowship and tutorship in English at Merton College, Oxford. This appointment was to last for the next 13 years." (edmundblunden.org)
• In November of 1937 he published An Elegy and Other Poems.
• Blunden in 1940 (during World War II) worked with the University Officer Training Corps in order to assist in the instruction of map reading. (edmundblunden.org)
• In 1942 Blunden resigned his position at Oxford to join the Times Literary Supplement as a staff writer. (edmundblunden.org)
• On November 6, 1947 Blunden became a Cultural Advisor to Japan as a member of the United Kingdom's Liaison Mission. (edmundblunden.org)
• Blunden leaves Japan in May of 1950 so as to return to his post at the Times Literary Supplement. (edmundblunden.org)
• In late September of 1953 Blunden agrees to become the Chair of English at Hong Kong University. (edmundblunden.org)
• Blunden returns to England in 1964 and by February of 1966 he was elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford University. (edmundblunden.org)
• In 1968 under medical advice Blunden resigns his Professorship. (edmundblunden.org)
• July of 1968 Blunden publishes The Midnight Skaters: Poems for younger readers.

Works of Poetry and Prose in Chronological Order

• Poems 1913 and 1914, Poems Translated from the French (October 1914)
• The Harbingers (May 1916)
• Pastorals (June 1916)
• The Waggoner (August 1920)
• Poems Chiefly from Manuscript by John Clare - Blunden and Porter's edition (November 1920)
• The Shepherd and Other Poems of Peace and War (April 1922)
• The Bonadventure - journal of Edmund Blunden's voyage to South America (December 1922)
• Christ's Hospital: A Retrospect (November 1923)
• A Song to David by Christopher Smart - edited by Edmund Blunden (March 1924)
• Masks of Time (June 1925)
• Shelley and Keats: As they struck their Contemporaries - edited by Edmund Blunden (September 1925)
• English Poems (January 1926)
• On the Poems of Henry Vaughan - essay and translations of the principal Latin poems (March 1927)
• Retreat (May 1928)
• Leigh Hunt's Examiner Examined; an account of the newspaper, extracts and commentary (July 1928)
• Japanese Garland (September 1928)
• The Autobiography of Leigh Hunt - introduced by Blunden (September 1928)
• Undertones of War (November 1928) revised edition (Nov. 1930), new preface in World Classics edition (1956), new introduction in the Collins edition (1964)
• Poems of William Collins - edited by Edmund Blunden (June 1929)
• Near and Far (September 1929)
• Leigh Hunt - biography (May 1930)
• De Bello Germanico - a fragment of trench history written in 1918 (November 1930)
• The Poems of Edmund Blunden 1914 - 1930 (December 1930)
• Sketches in the Life of John Clare - edited by Edmund Blunden (March 1931)
• Poems of Wilfred Owen - edited by Edmund Blunden (March 1931)
• Votive Tablets: Studies Chiefly Appreciative of English Authors and Books (November 1931)
• The Face of England (March 1932)
• A Halfway House (November 1932)
• Charles Lamb and his Contemporaries (November 1932) published (1933)
• We'll Shift Our Ground - novel written with Sylva Norman, Blunden's second wife (January 1933)
• The Mind's Eye (April 1934)
• Choice or Chance (November 1934)
• An Elegy and Other Poems (November 1937)
• Poems 1930 - 1940 (January 1941)
• English Villages (September 1941)
• Thomas Hardy - English Men of Letters' series (February 1942)
• Cricket Country (April 1944)
• Shells by a Stream (October 1944)
• Shelley - a biography (April 1946)
• After the Bombing (October 1949)
• John Keats - Writers and their Works' series (September 1950) revised (1954), (1959), (1966)
• Edmund Blunden: a Selection of his Poetry and Prose - edited by Kenneth Hopkins (October 1950)
• Poems by Ivor Gurney - edited by Edmund Blunden (September 1954)
• Charles Lamb - Writers and their Works' series (November 1954) revised (1964)
• Poems of Many Years - selected and arranged by Rupert Hart-Davis (July 1957)
• War Poets 1914-1918 - Writers and their Works' series (July 1958) revised (1964)
• A Hong Kong House (September 1962)
• Eleven Poems (March 1966)
• The Midnight Skaters: Poems for young readers - chosen and introduced by C. Day Lewis (July 1968)
  

Critical Response: "A leading authority on the Romantic movement of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Blunden drew upon the British pastoral tradition exemplified by such poets as William Wordsworth and John Keats to evoke the tranquility of nature and the English countryside in his own verse. Although widely recognized as a member of the Georgian poets, a group of stylistically diverse writers who rejected modernist literary tendencies while describing the idyllic qualities of rural Britain, Blunden was also praised for both his war poetry and his light verse. While critics initially commended his picturesque representations of rustic life, many commentators from the 1930s era of social reform dismissed Blunden's work as derivative and superficial, asserting that his preference for outmoded literary techniques often reflects a lack of concern for modern social, psychological, or philosophical issues. Later critics, however, have praised Blunden for his subtle variations on traditional poetic forms. A reviewer for The Times Literary Supplement commented: "[Blunden] has been pigeon-holed in his time as a pastoral poet, as a war poet, as a 'literary' poet, yet it is impossible to pin his variety into such narrow limits. . . . Like Hardy he can take the accepted cadences of classical English verse, and bend them to his purpose with beautiful dexterity. . . But in general Mr. Blunden commands his own music as he wants."
(Contemporary Literary Criticism)

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