Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

Born in Sussex in 1840, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt began adult life in the British diplomatic service, but he left it after his marriage to Lady Anne Blunt, a granddaughter of Lord Byron. He became known as a poet and diarist, and his life soon grew far wider than the usual literary circle.

With Lady Anne, he traveled extensively in the Middle East, and the two became important figures in preserving Arabian horse bloodlines through the Crabbet Arabian Stud. Those journeys also shaped his political outlook: Blunt became a forceful critic of British imperial policy and spoke in support of Egyptian, Indian, and Irish nationalist causes.

He is remembered today as a distinctly unconventional Victorian figure — part poet, part political dissenter, part traveler — whose work and diaries capture both the romance and the tensions of his age. He died in 1922.