Edmund Blunden, Undertones of War

John Greening (Independent Scholar - Europe)

Ed. by Chris Baldick, Goldsmiths College, University of London
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.08: English Writing and Culture of the early Twentieth Century , 1900-1945.
Vol. editors: Chris Baldick (Goldsmiths College, University of London), Peter Childs (Newman University), Louise McDonald (Newman University)

Dates

First circulation or publication Nov 1928

Places

England (Publication/ performance)
Japan (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Non-Fiction
- Autobiography (literary)
Poem collection

Resources

Undertones of War (1928; revised 1930) is a prose memoir by Edmund Blunden (1896-1974) in which the English poet recalls his two years on the Western Front as a junior officer with the Royal Sussex Regiment. It includes an appendix of more than thirty war poems selected from the many he composed during and after the First World War. His was one of the first in a series of notable war-memoirs and war-novels that followed the tenth anniversary of the 1918 Armistice. It has never gone out of print.

Although born in London’s Tottenham Court Road, Edmund Blunden was brought up a Kentish boy, devoted to the countryside and books and cricket, all of which feature in Undertones. He was seventeen at the outbreak …

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2194 words

Citation: Greening, John. "Undertones of War". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 07 November 2018 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=9706, accessed 18 April 2024.]

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