Manuscript Collection MS COLL 00372 - Yuan Collection of Edmund Blunden Papers

Edmund Blunden was born in London, England, in 1896. Educated at Christ's Hospital and Queen's College, Oxford, he joined the Royal Sussex Regiment on the outbreak of the First World War. During the war, Blunden fought at Ypres and the Somme and won the Military Cross for bravery. Blunden wrote about these experiences in Undertones of War (1928). He also produced collected editions of the work of the war poets Wilfred Owen (1931) and Ivor Gurney (1954). He held several academic posts, including professor of English literature at Tokyo University, University of Hong Kong and Oxford University. He wrote books on Leigh Hunt, Thomas Hardy, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Charles Lamb. He also published several volumes of poetry: Pastorals (1916), The Waggoner (1920), The Shepherd (1922), English Poems (1925), Poems: 1930-40 (1941) and After the Bombing (1950). He died in 1974.