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Edmund Blunden (Estate)
Book Agent: Michael Sissons
Dramatic Rights: Anthony Jones

Edmund Charles Blunden (1896-1974) was born in London but soon afterwards his family moved to Yalding in Kent. Educated at Christ's Hospital and the Queen's College, Oxford, he joined the Royal Sussex Regiment on the outbreak of the Great War.

During the war Blunden saw action at both the Somme and Ypres and was awarded the Military Cross. Some of his finest poems such as "The Third Ypres" and "Report on Experience" dealt with his life in the trenches. Blunden went on to write about his wartime experience in his best-known work UNDERTONES OF WAR (1928) which has remained in print since its publication.

In 1920 it was Siegfried Sassoon, a lifelong friend and then editor of the DAILY HERALD, who published Blunden's first collection of poetry THE WAGGONER. Much of his work was inspired by the English countryside, seen in some of his best-known poems such as "Winter: East Anglia", "Forefathers", "The Midnight Skaters" and "The Pike".

Throughout his life Blunden did much to promote the work of other poets. In 1920 he edited a collection of poetry by John Clare, which helped reveal Clare's work to a wider audience. In 1931 he performed a similar service for Wilfred Owen, overshadowing his own more restrained war poems. In 1954 he published a selection of poems by the then unknown poet Ivor Gurney, another survivor of the Great War, who had been committed to the City of London Mental Hospital.

Blunden held several academic posts including Professor of English Literature at Tokyo University from 1924-1927, and later at the University of Hong Kong. In 1956 he was awarded the Queen's Medal for Poetry and in 1966 was appointed Professor of Poetry at Oxford University. Blunden also wrote critical assessments of Leigh Hunt, Thomas Hardy, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Charles Lamb. His volumes of poetry include PASTORALS (1916), THE WAGGONER (1920), THE SHEPHERD (1922), ENGLISH POEMS (1925), POEMS: 1930-1940 (1941) and AFTER THE BOMBING (1950).

Edmund Blunden died in 1974 and is buried in the churchyard of Holy Trinity Church, Long Melford, Suffolk.

UNDERTONES OF WAR

PENGUIN

In this memoir of the Great War, the poet Edmund Blunden records his experiences as an infantry subaltern in France and Flanders. Enlisting at the age of 20 in 1916, he took part in the disastrous battles of the Somme, Ypres and Passchendaele, describing the latter as "murder, not only to the troops, but to their singing faiths and hopes". He tells of the many evidences of endurance, heroism, and despair found among the officers and men of his battalion. This volume, which also contains a selection of his war poems, reveals the close affinity which Blunden felt with the natural world. While he laments the loss of optimism, the betrayal of promise and the futility wrought by the war, Blunden finds hope in the natural landscape; it is the only thing which survives the terrible betrayal enacted in the Flanders fields. Edmund Blunden died in 1974.

ISBN: 0 14 118436 1