Blunt, Wilfrid Scawen

(1840-1922)

   Blunt was a Sussex traveler and politician, born into wealth and best known for his support for Egyptian, Indian and Irish independence, which earned him a spell in an Irish jail. His Ideas about India (1885) and The Future of Islam (1882) made him unpopular with the British government. He spent part of every year in Egypt, dressing as an Arab, speaking the Bedouin dialect, and arbitrating in tribal disputes. He was buried, according to his wishes, in the woods of his estate without religious rites. His many poems, including "The Love Sonnets of Proteus" and "The Wind and the Whirlwind," are vivid, genuine, versatile and spontaneous. His sense of justice is caught in the poem "The Deeds That Might Have Been." Some of his other poems: "Ambition," "As to His Choice of Her," "Assassins," "Coronation Ode (1911)," "Farewell to Juliet," "Fear Has Cast Out Love," "Gibraltar," "Honor Dishonored," "Mockery of Life," "Sea Lavender," "St. Valentine's Day," "The Falcon," "The Morte d'Arthur," "The Sinner-Saint," "To One Now Estranged," "Written at Sea."

   Sources: A Treasury of Great Poems: English and American. Louis Untermeyer, ed. Simon and Schuster, 1955. Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. English Poetry: Author Search. Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 1995 (http://www.lib.utexas.edu:8080/search/epoetry/author.html). Poems of Wilfrid Scawen Blunt. Macmillan and Co., 1923. 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 National Portrait Gallery (www.npg.org.uk). The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000.