Edmund Blunden, 20th century poet

Edmund Charles Blunden was born in London on 1^st November 1896, the eldest of nine children of schoolteacher parents. When he was four the family moved to Yalding, near Maidstone in Kent, where Edmund acquired his love of the natural world that was to last throughout his life.

In 1909 he won a scholarship to Christ’s Hospital School at Horsham, Sussex, where he was very happy. Unfortunately, his school career ended just as World War I was breaking out, and in 1915 he was commissioned as a second lieutenant.

His war service began in 1916 and he served for two years in the trenches. The rank of second lieutenant was notorious for its high rate of casualties, as these were the officers who led their men “over the top”, but Blunden had something of a charmed life as he survived the war without even a minor injury. He also won a Military Cross for his courage under fire.

However, the war affected him deeply in terms of the loss and destruction that he witnessed all around him. As well as seeing colleagues and friends killed, he also mourned the loss of a natural world that reminded him of the peaceful countryside he had grown up in. These impressions were to form the major themes of his war poetry, although much of this was written after the war had ended.

He returned to England before the war was completely over, and was based at a camp in Suffolk when he met and married a local girl in June 1918. He stayed in the Army until 1919. The Blundens’ first child, a girl, was born in July but died within a few weeks, an event that Edmund grieved for the rest of his life. Two other children were born later.

Edmund had been awarded a scholarship to Oxford while still at school, and in October 1919 he took this up by going to Queen’s College. He had already made the acquaintance of Siegfried Sassoon, and Oxford gave him the chance to mingle with other up-and-coming writers.

However, he did not settle into academic life and left Oxford in 1920 to become a part-time literary editor and concentrate on his own writing of poetry. His first poetry collection, “The Waggoner” appeared in 1920, and he also co-edited the poems of John Clare, a fellow poet of the countryside with whom Blunden felt great affinity, albeit one from a previous age. Blunden’s edition did much to rescue Clare’s reputation from obscurity. He also produced a large number of reviews and much biographical and critical journalism. His second collection of poems, “The Shepherd”, appeared in 1922.

As a poet, Edmund Blunden saw himself as a Romantic who refused to be converted to the current modernist trends of poets such as T. S. Eliot, although Eliot was himself one of Blunden’s admirers. Blunden’s themes were based on the natural world, but nature was seen by him as being malign as well as comforting. There are shades of Thomas Hardy in this attitude, and Hardy was a poet whom Blunden much admired. Another constant theme in his work is war, coupled with his underlying guilt at having survived when so many others had not.

In 1924 Edmund Blunden accepted a post as Professor of English at the Imperial University of Tokyo, to which he went unaccompanied by his wife. He was fascinated by Japan, which gave him fresh perspectives and themes for his poetry. However, he also used his time there to produce a prose account of his experiences of World War I. This was “Undertones of War”, published in 1928, which was written entirely from memory with only maps to help him to piece things together.

On his return to England in 1927 his marriage broke up and divorce followed in 1931. In 1933 he married again, his second wife being a novelist named Sylva Norman.

After a year back in his former role as a literary editor he accepted a post at Oxford as a tutor in English at Merton College, where he stayed for 13 years, being highly regarded by his students and publishing more poetry collections and literary studies, including one of Thomas Hardy.

In 1944 he left Oxford, becoming assistant editor of the “Times Literary Supplement” in 1945. His second marriage also broke up, and he married for a third time in May 1945, his new wife being a former student, with whom he had four daughters. In 1946 he published a study of Shelley which was widely regarded as being of the highest quality.

From 1947 to 1950 he was back in Japan, lecturing in English and publishing “After the Bombing” in 1950, a volume of poems that were more searching and contemplative than his previous work.

In 1953 he was appointed Professor of English Literature at the University of Hong Kong. He retired in 1964 to live in Suffolk.

In 1966 he stood, reluctantly, for the elective professorship of poetry at Oxford, which he won easily. This post, which is largely honorary, only requires the holder to give occasional lectures. Blunden had always been happy as a writer and researcher, and a teacher of small groups, rather than being on the public stage, and he did not really relish lecturing to large audiences. He therefore resigned his post after two years. He died on 20^th January 1974 at the age of 77.

His reputation as one of the leading poets of the 20^th century has continued to the present day. It is difficult to pin him down as belonging to a particular group. He counts as one of the war poets of World War I, but he was also a nature poet. He followed no particular stylistic trend, and always retained his own voice, refusing to be carried along on any passing wave of poetic fashion.

Through his meticulous scholarship he was able to bring other poets to public attention and showcase their work, these including Wilfred Owen and Ivor Gurney, and he therefore performed valuable services to literature in general as well as being a poet whose work repays reading.

© John Welford