Blunden was the author of over a thousand poems, more than three thousand articles and reviews, and biographies of Shelly and Leigh Hunt, and he was the first major editor of John Clare and Wilfred Owen. Webb describes this active literary life and provides an account of Blunden's many influential friendships ( with Siegfried Sassoon, for example), of his three marriages and seven children, and of the intriguing relationship with his Japanese secretary.
The First World War produced an extraordinary flowering of poetic talent, poets whose words commemorate the conflict more personally and as enduringly as monuments in stone. Lines such as 'What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?' and 'They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old' have come to express the feelings of a nation about the horrors and aftermath of war. This new anthology provides a definitive record of the achievements of the Great War poets. As well as offering generous selections from the celebrated soldier-poets, including Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Rupert Brooke, and Ivor Gurney, it also incorporates less well-known writing by civilian and women poets. Music hall and trench songs provide a further lyrical perspective on the War. A general introduction charts the history of the war poets' reception and challenges prevailing myths about the war poets' progress from idealism to bitterness. The work of each poet is prefaced with a biographical account that sets the poems in their historical context. Although the War has now passed out of living memory, its haunting of our language and culture has not been exorcised. Its poetry survives because it continues to speak to and about us.
An evocative exploration of the impact of the Mediterranean on British culture, ranging from the mid-eighteenth century to today Ever since the age of the Grand Tour in the eighteenth century, the Mediterranean has had a significant pull for Britons—including many painters and poets—who sought from it the inspiration, beauty, and fulfillment that evaded them at home. Referred to as “Magick Land” by one traveler, dreams about the Mediterranean, and responses to it, went on to shape the culture of a nation. Written by one of the world’s leading historians of the Mediterranean, this book charts how a new sensibility arose from British engagement with the Mediterranean, ancient and modern. Ranging from Byron’s poetry to Damien Hirst’s installations, Robert Holland shows that while idealized visions and aspirations often met with disillusionment and frustration, the Mediterranean also offered a notably insular society the chance to enrich itself through an imagined world of color, carnival, and sensual self-discovery.
"[Here] John Greening sends dispatches across the decades. In a sequence of verse letters he addresses the poets of the First World war directly, making connections yet always aware of distance. ... Greening explores 'Englishness,' but, also, in his translations from German poets, goes beyond it. ..."--Back cover.
Wilfred Owen, one of the finest poets of World War I, was also one of its most-mourned casualties. The poet was survived not only by the verse upon which his reputation is founded, but also by the thousands of letters he wrote from the age of five to the eve of his death at the age of twenty-five. Selected Letters of Wilfred Owen includes some early examples, but concentrates on the correspondence of the poet's last seven years--the period in which he came into his own as an artist.
