Edmund Blunden (1896 – 1974) ranks among the most prodigious literary talents of his time. As an author and soldier-poet of the Great War, his literary career as a teacher, scholar, biographer and editor culminated in his election as Professor of Poetry at Oxford University in 1966. His pioneering literary work on John Clare, Wilfred Owen and Ivor Gurney made these poets available to the twentieth century reader for the first time.