Collections

Correspondence, manuscripts, documents, photographs and printed material of the English poet and critic, Edmund Blunden, documenting his personal and professional activity. Blunden's letters to his second wife, Sylva Norman, and his secretary, Aki Hayashi, are particularly well represented. Also included are many letters addressed to Blunden by eminent literary figures such as John Betjeman, George Orwell, Siegfried Sassoon, Stephen Spender, and Henry Williamson. Other literary correspondents are Adrian Bell, Joyce Cary, Richard Church, C. Day Lewis, Walter de la Mare, Graham Greene, H.D., William Plomer, Kathleen Raine, and Leonard Woolf. A substantial portion of the cataloged correspondence contains drawings, verse fragments and poems by Blunden which have been analyzed. Also present are eleven of Blunden's diaries, 1936-1967, which contain drafts of a number of poems. In addition, the collection contains a small number of autograph manuscripts of Edmund Blunden's literary works.

Correspondence and manuscripts. The collection includes manuscript drafts and typescripts of two volumes of his autobiography: THE OLD CENTURY AND SEVEN MORE YEARS, 1938; and THE WEALD OF YOUTH, 1942. There are also 13 volumes of early notebooks for the period 1894 until 1909 (from age 8 to 22) containing drafts of over 200 poems, 19 short stories and many drawings. There is some correspondence about the autobiography. Also includes 21 letters from Arnold Bennett, 51 letters from Lady Ottoline Morrell, 26 letters from H.M. Tomlinson, 19 letters from Sassoon to his mother-in-law, Lady Gatty, 22 letters from Sassoon to his son, letters from many others, and a typescript of his poem "A love affair" with holograph note