Blunden, Edmund Charles

(1896-1974)

   Born in London to parents who were both schoolteachers, he spent most of his young life in the village of Yalding in Kent. He was educated at Cleave's Grammar School and Christ's Hospital, Horsham, Sussex (the school moved from London in 1902.) Commissioned in 1915, Blunden fought in France and Belgium with the Royal Sussex Regiment and was awarded the Military Cross in 1916. After the war he was a journalist for the Athenaeum. He taught in Japan and Hong Kong and served with the U.K. liaison mission in Tokyo from 1947 to 1950. He was a tutor at Oxford and served on the staff of The Times Literary Supplement. He was awarded numerous honors and was appointed Commander of the British Empire in 1951. His war poetry is reckoned to be the best of its kind, and he is one of the poets commemorated by a tablet in Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey, to "The Poets of the First World War." Some of his poems: "1916 Seen from 1921," "Behind the Line," "Flanders Now," "January Full Moon, Ypres," "The Aftermath," "The Blind Lead the Blind."

   Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. Minds at War, The Poetry and Experience of the First World War. David Roberts. Saxon Books, 1999, 2003 (www.warpoetry.co.uk/minds_p1.html). The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. The Poems of Edmund Blunden, 1914-1930. Cobden-Sanderson, 1930. Westminster Abbey Official Guide (no date).