Edmund Charles Blunden was an English poet, author, and critic. Like his friend Siegfried Sassoon, he wrote of his experiences in World War I in both verse and prose. For most of his career, Blunden was also a reviewer for English publications and an academic in Tokyo and later Hong Kong. He ended his career as Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature six times.
Blunden, c. 1914
Edmund Blunden by William Rothenstein, chalk, 1922
Edmund Blunden by Rex Whistler, pencil, 1929
Edmund Blunden by Lady Ottoline Morrell, vintage snapshot print, 1920
Siegfried Loraine Sassoon was an English war poet, writer, and soldier. Decorated for bravery on the Western Front, he became one of the leading poets of the First World War. His poetry both described the horrors of the trenches and satirized the patriotic pretensions of those who, in Sassoon's view, were responsible for a jingoism-fuelled war. Sassoon became a focal point for dissent within the armed forces when he made a lone protest against the continuation of the war with his "Soldier's Declaration" of July 1917, which resulted in his being sent to the Craiglockhart War Hospital. During this period he met and formed a friendship with Wilfred Owen, who was greatly influenced by him. Sassoon later won acclaim for his prose work, notably his three-volume, fictionalised autobiography, collectively known as the Sherston trilogy.
Sassoon photographed in 1915 by George Charles Beresford
Sassoon (front) with his brother Hamo and other students on the morning after a college May Ball at Cambridge University in 1906
Portrait of Sassoon by Glyn Warren Philpot, 1917 (Fitzwilliam Museum)
An agreement from Arthur Quiller-Couch to Sassoon to write for The Daily Herald