Selected Poems

by Edmund Blunden, Robyn Marsack (Editor)

This selection, drawing on a wide range of subject matter, emphasizes Blunden's gift for precise, delicate observation and his mastery of diverse poetic form. His first poem appeared in 1914; The Shepherd in 1922 made his reputation. We can now see him as one of the best Georgians, a man deeply acquainted with that tradition of English poetry which includes Clare-of whose work he was a pioneering editor-and Hardy, and advancing it in his work. Yet the picture that emerges from this edition will unsettle a reader's expectations of the pleasantly pastoral, revealing a poet of quiet authority and haunting imagination.
The compiler of this selection, Robyn Marsack, is an editor and translator living in Glasgow. She has also edited a collection of Thomas Bewick's wood-engravings for the Fyfield series.

Genres: Poetry

107 pages, Paperback

Published October 1, 1984

About the author

Author, critic, and poet (the latter which for which he is most well known) Edmund Charles Blunden was born in London, and educated at The Queen's College at Oxford. In 1915 he was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant with the Royal Sussex Regiment which he served with through the end of the war. He saw heavy action on the Western Front at both Ypres and the Somme, and was awarded the Military Cross. Miraculously he was never severely injured.

Following the war he served as Professor of English at the University of Tokyo from 1924-1927. He returned to England as magazine editor, and in 1931 he became a tutor at Oxford University where his writing career flourished. Post Second World War he became Professor of English Literature in Hong Kong.

He succeeded fellow Great War poet Robert Graves as Oxford Professor of Poetry, but lecturing proved to be a strain and he resigned after two years. His remaining years were spent in Suffolk, where he died in 1974.

He remained good friends with fellow poet Siegfried Sassoon, and during his career edited some of the first editions of Wilfred Owen and Ivor Gurney's poetry contributing to their memory. He is commemorated on a plaque in Westminster Abbey along with 15 other poets of the First World War.