author
Edmund Blunden
1896–1974
Best known as one of the most memorable literary voices of the First World War, he wrote with unusual calm, clarity, and feeling about both battle and the English countryside. His work moves easily between tenderness and sorrow, making it deeply human as well as historically vivid.
1 Audiobook
The Bonadventure: A Random Journal of an Atlantic Holiday
by Edmund Blunden
About the author
Born in London on November 1, 1896, and raised largely in Kent, Edmund Blunden became an English poet, critic, and man of letters whose writing was shaped by a lasting love of rural life. He studied at Christ's Hospital and later at Oxford, though his education was interrupted by service in the First World War.
Blunden served on the Western Front from 1916 to 1918, and that experience stayed at the center of much of his best-known work. His memoir Undertones of War helped establish his international reputation, and his poems are still valued for their restrained, haunting account of war alongside their deep feeling for landscape, memory, and ordinary life.
He was also a prolific reviewer, editor, and teacher, spending many years in academic posts in Tokyo and later Hong Kong. Across a long career, he remained a graceful, thoughtful presence in English literature, and he died on January 20, 1974, in Suffolk, England.