These are the books referred to frequently in the notes, in shortened form by initials, title or author.
Other references to information or quoted matter are given in full in the notes.
Edmund Blunden, The Poems of Edmund Blunden 1914â1930 (London: Cobden-Sanderson, 1930)
EB: notes made in Claire Poyntingâs copy of this collection, in ink; also later pencilled emendations, possibly made for a proposed âselected poemsâ. The book is now held in the Blunden Collection of the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas.
Edmund Blunden, The Shepherd and other poems of peace and war (London: Cobden-Sanderson, 1922)
EBS: notes made by EB in this volume; for background see http://www.edmundblunden.org/newsevent.php?newseventid=1162 (accessed 30 March 2018)
Edmund Blunden, Fall In, Ghosts â selected war prose, edited by Robyn Marsack (Manchester: Carcanet Press, 2014)
Edmund Blunden, The Deceitful Calm, a new selection of poems, edited by Rennie Parker & Margi Blunden (Holt: Laurel Books, 2006), with useful notes (TDC)
Edmund Blunden, Undertones of War, edited by John Greening (Oxford University Press, 2015), with extensive notes and an additional poetry supplement
Robert Bridges, âThe Dialectical Words in Edmund Blundenâs Poemsâ, Society of Pure English tract no. 5, 1921. See http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12524/12524-h/12524-h.htm (accessed 16 March 2018)
John Milton, Poetical Works, ed. Douglas Bush (Oxford University Press, 1969)
Carol Rothkopf, ed., Selected Letters of Siegfried Sassoon and Edmund Blunden, 3 vols (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2012)
Barry Webb, Edmund Blunden: a biography (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990)
Joseph Wright, ed., English Dialect DictionaryâŚ, 6 vols (London: Henry Frowde, publisher to the English Dialect Society, 1898â1905)
Drafts and fair copies of some poems, along with other documents and photographs, may be found in the Blunden section of the First World War Poetry Digital Archive â http://ww1lit.nsms.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/collections
NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION
1. Blunden in James Gibson, ed., Let the Poet Choose (London: George Harrap & Co., 1973), p.31.
2. Selected Letters, 1, p.288 (21 June 1930).
3. Blunden, âCountry Childhoodâ in Simon Nowell-Smith, ed., Edwardian England 1901â1914 (London: Oxford University Press, 1964), pp.571â2.
4. Webb, Edmund Blunden, p.26.
5. âCountry Childhoodâ, p.573.
6. Blunden, âDe Bello Germanicoâ, Fall In, Ghosts, p.35.
7. Undertones of War, Chapter VIII; this was in August 1916.
8. According to Rupert Hart-Davis, Robert Graves described Blunden as looking like âa cross between Julius Caesar and a birdâ; Henry Williamson likened his handwriting to âthe flight and appearance of that gentle bird [the night-jar]â (Webb, pp.3â4).
9. Virginia Woolf was among the 35 guests at the dinner for Blunden on the eve of his departure, and noted in her diary for 12 March 1924: âBlunden despairing, drooping, crow-like, rather than Keats-like. And did we really all believe in Blundenâs genius? Had we read his poetry? How much sincerity was there in the whole thing?â (Virginia Woolf, A Momentâs Liberty: the shorter diary, London: Pimlico, 1997, p. 179). She may be referring to Keats as a generic poet-figure; perhaps she may have heard, via Sassoon, of Hardyâs opinion: âEdmund Blunden flitted in and out of Max Gate, with his perennial topics of the past war, Christâs Hospital, cricket, and Keats; he won from Hardy the valued though hardly correct opinion that he had an air of Keats himselfâ (Robert Gittings, The Older Hardy, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1980, p.271).
There are various references to Blunden by Woolf in her diaries and letters; in 1929 he was at a party given by the Woolfs along with VWâs nephew, Julian Bell. In her diary for 12 May 1929 Woolf refers to him as âlittle Blunden, the very image of a London house sparrowâ (A Momentâs Liberty, p.259). In a letter to Vita Sackville-West on 13 November 1929, she recounts asking Bell who were the best living poets: âHe replied at once Vita and Blundenâ (A Reflection of the Other Person: the letters of Virginia Woolf 1929â1931, London, The Hogarth Press, 1978, p. 108). Bell published a volume of poetry, Winter Movement, in 1930, and received âa charming letterâ from Blunden, who reviewed the book anonymously for the Times Literary Supplement in 1931 (Peter Stansky & William Abrahams, Journey to the Frontier, Julian Bell and John Cornford: their lives and the 1930 s, London: Constable, 1966, p.71). Bell was to die in Spain in 1937, aged 29, when the ambulance he was driving was bombed by the Nationalists. Ironically, Blunden was one of five to have taken Francoâs side when asked to declare himself in Authors Take Sides on the Spanish Civil War, compiled by his friend and fellow veteran Edgell Rickword (Charles Hobday, Edgell Rickword: a poet at war, Manchester: Carcanet Press, 1989, pp.194â5).
10. Blunden, âWar and Peaceâ, Fall In, Ghosts, pp. 47, 46.
11. Eric J. Leed, No Manâs Land: combat and identity in World War I (Cambridge University Press, 1979), p.113 quoting from C.E. Carrington, Soldiers from the Wars Returning (London, 1965), p.252.
12. Edmund Blunden, War Poets 1914â1918, published for the British Council and the National Book League (Harlow: Longmans, Green & Co., 1958; reprinted with additions to the bibliography 1964, 1969), pp.33â4.
13. Selected Letters, 1, p.208 (20 December 1928).
14. Quoted by Webb, p.243.
15. âLine upon Lineâ, The Mindâs Eye, p.112. Blunden wrote that âthe earliest enjoyment of pictures I can recall came from a brightly tinted Japanese piece of finches on a boughâŚâ, âCountry Childhoodâ, pp.551â2.
16. Blunden, Nature in English Literature (London: The Hogarth Press, 1929), p.58. Field mice make a notable appearance in the midst of battle in âThird Ypresâ: â(These / Calmed me, on these depended my salvation.)â
17. Webb, p.318. Blunden unexpectedly won the vote to be Professor of Poetry (succeeding Robert Graves) against Robert Lowell; the American poet wrote him a gracious letter of congratulation.
18. On the day he died, Sassoon read a letter from a soldier who had served with him as a 16-year-old on the Somme. Having heard Sassoon declare âI mean to put up a really good showâ, his son wrote to the veteran that he felt sure âthe thoughts in his mind of the old days in the trenches helped him over those last few hoursâ (Max Egremont, Siegfried Sassoon: a biography, London: Picador, 2005, p.518). The Great War was there to the end.
19. Letter to Douglas quoted in Desmond Graham, Keith Douglas 1920â1944 â a biography (Oxford University Press, 1974), p.218n. The âtruth of warâ and the idea of fighting poets as the only writers able to convey it are discussed in the essay âGoing over the ground againâ at the end of this volume.