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Undertones of War Hardcover – 6 October 2015

by Blunden (Author)
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 273 ratings
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Edmund Blunden (1896-1974) was one of the youngest of the war poets, enlisting straight from school to find himself in some of the Western Front's most notorious hot-spots. His prose memoir, written in a rich, allusive vein, full of anecdote and human interest, is unique for its quiet authority and for the potency of its dream-like narrative. Once we accept the archaic conventions and catch the tone--which can be by turns horrifying or hilarious--Undertones of War gradually reveals itself as a masterpiece. It is clear why it has remained in print since it first appeared in 1928.This new edition not only offers the original unrevised version of the prose narrative, written at white heat when Blunden was teaching in Japan and had no access to his notes, but provides a great deal of supplementary material never before gathered together. Blunden's 'Preliminary' expresses the lifelong compulsion he felt 'to go over the ground again' and for half a century he prepared new prefaces, added annotations. All those prefaces and a wide selection of his commentaries are included here--marginalia from friends' first editions, remarks in letters, extracts from later essays, and a substantial part of his war diary. John Greening has provided a scholarly introduction discussing the bibliographical and historical background, and brings his poet's eye to a much expanded (and more representative) selection of Blunden's war poetry. For the first time we can see the poet Blunden as the major figure he was. Blunden had always hoped for a properly illustrated edition of the work, and kept a folder full of possible pictures. The editor, with the Blunden family's help, has selected some of the best of them to include in this new edition.
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  1. ISBN-10
    0198716613
  2. ISBN-13
    978-0198716617
  3. Publisher
    Oxford University Press UK
  4. Publication date
    6 October 2015
  5. Language
    English
  6. Dimensions
    15.1 x 3.97 x 22.2 cm
  7. Print length
    380 pages
  8. See all details
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Product description

Review

This is an invaluable contribution to our knowledge of both the poet and the war he so miraculously survived, to say nothing of our understanding of the poetry it produced. ― N.S. Thompson, Times Literary Supplement

John Greening's edition will stand as the authoritative one for many years to come. The editorial work in this new edition from Oxford University Press is outstanding ... The whole book, containing photographs and drawings presented within the text, is a delight to hold and compelling to read. ― Ian Brinton, WarPoets.org.uk

Almost certainly the most comprehensive treatment that Undertones has received ... Greening has tackled Undertones and its related texts with great thoroughness, and his book re-establishes beyond doubt the position of Blunden as a major war writer and Undertones of War as a major war book. ― Michael Copp, New Canterbury Literary Society News

From the Publisher

John Greening studied at the Universities of Swansea, Exeter, and Mannheim. After working for Hans Keller at BBC Radio 3, he went to Upper Egypt to teach English with VSO. He has been a school-teacher ever since and lives with his wife in Kimbolton, Cambridgeshire. Since 1982, he has published over a dozen collections of poetry, most recently Hunts: Poems 1979-2009 (Greenwich Exchange, 2009) and To the War Poets (Carcanet, 2013). He received a Cholmondeley Award from the Society of Authors in 2008 and has won the Bridport Prize and the TLS Centenary Prize. He is a regular reviewer of poetry for the TLS and a judge for the Eric Gregory Awards. His critical books include Poets of the First World War, Poetry Masterclass, Elizabethan Love Poets and studies of Ted Hughes, Hardy, Yeats, and Edward Thomas. Vapour Trails, a selection of his reviews and essays, will shortly be published.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Oxford University Press UK (6 October 2015)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 380 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0198716613
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0198716617
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 15.1 x 3.97 x 22.2 cm
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 273 ratings

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  1. Edmund Blunden

    Edmund Blunden

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  2. John Greening

    John Greening

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    John Greening, recipient of the Bridport and TLS Centenary prizes and a Cholmondeley Award, is author of over twenty collections, including To the War Poets and The Silence from Carcanet. A substantial American selection of his work, The Interpretation of Owls: Selected Poems 1977-2022, edited by Kevin Gardner, appeared from Baylor University Press in 2023 and his next is From the East: 60 Huntingdonshire Codices (Renard). He has edited Edmund Blunden's Undertones of War - the illustrated 2015 OUP edition - as well as the poetry of Geoffrey Grigson, Iain Crichton Smith and a U.A.Fanthorpe Selected: Not My Best Side (Baylor, 2024). His translations of Goethe, Nightwalker’s Song, appeared in 2022 and there is a forthcoming edition of Rilke’s complete New Poems. He has published anthologies on music, rubbish, sheds, country houses and Englishness: Contraflow: Lines of Englishness 1922-2022 (with Kevin Gardner) was a Poetry Book of the Year in the Guardian and Sunday Times. His collected essays, Vapour Trails, came out in 2020 and there is a new selection in 2025.

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kelly
5.0 out of 5 stars Forget history books and fictional accounts this biography of war time service is the real deal.
Reviewed in the United States on 19 February 2014
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A wonderful piece of prose some times verging on impressionism rather than factual representation but without detracting from the reading experience. Lack of any reference to the writers own feelings or sensations during the course of his experiences particularly some of the obviously more traumatic events gives the book the feeling of been written from a narrator's perspective and denies the personal insight allowing the reader to connect to the fear, anxiety, personal discomfort that one would have imagined he must have felt at the time. Of course he was a middle-class public schoolboy which at that time would have been perhaps the best training for a life in the army and in the trenches so that maybe as a young man he actually didn't find the experience that terrifying or alarming in a "mustn't grumble" type of a way characteristic of Englishmen of his upbringing and social background at the time who got on with the job, managed an Empire, and didn't make a fuss.
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Gary P. Smith
5.0 out of 5 stars A deeply moving account.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 10 October 2014
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Over many decades this book has been described as ‘difficult’ to read. The reasons vary and initially, I too had difficulty with sudden and apparently random changes in sentence structure (hence tempo) and violent changes of imagery.

It was when I realised that such passages were encountered principally in Blunden’s recollections of set-piece battles that I started to understand what he was trying to do and how effectively he had, in fact, done it. He has used the techniques of poets and composers to unsettle and sow confusion in his readers’ minds, which gets them to think about and sense (as far as that is possible) not just the sequence of events in any given attack (again as far as Blunden could see them), but also the feelings of ordinary soldiers and subalterns caught up in such Western Front battles – fear and confusion being predominant. Thus sudden shocks, random images, (within a sentence a blade of grass here, a piece of shrapnel there), an overwhelming sense of not being in control of one’s fate, are all reflected not just in words but in the structure of Blunden’s prose.

A different technique is used when a completely unexpected disaster befalls his subjects. A quiet passage describing what seems to be safe dug-out domesticity continues on its way even after a shell kills a number of the occupants. No punctuation or change of rhythm heralds the arrival of the shell, no crescendo or heightening of tension, just the fact. One has to go back to the beginning of the sentence to make sure one has truly understood what has just happened, and the shock is all the greater when one realises one has. Casual reference is made to a horse that is spotted behind German lines by British artillery which then kills it, menace being lent to the pointless cruelty by the smooth flow of the prose.

The writing is not perfect; elegiac passages, chiefly relating to the French countryside and his love of ancient books and churches are sometimes marred by highly obscure literary or historical references, which the editors have correctly surmised require a glossary at the front of the book. On such occasions one gets the sense that Blunden is more concerned with conveying the depth of his scholarship than enhancing his narrative – but such diversions are rare.

And should not divert one from the conclusion that this is a memorable piece of prose/poetry, the like of which I have not come across before, save possible in Yeates’ semi-autobiographical ‘Winged Victory’. I think it is interesting that both books were written around twelve years after the Armistice, hence with time for reflection, and both by officers who actually fought in the war so they knew what they were writing about.

The effect is profoundly moving.
12 people found this helpful
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Henry Dee
5.0 out of 5 stars Extraordinary detailed and harrowing but essential in understanding the endurance and suffering of foot soldiers.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 4 April 2024
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Took me a while to read cover to cover and I needed to ‘rest’ from the tragedy portrayed but well worth every page. Profound.
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Fred Schmertz
5.0 out of 5 stars Evocative
Reviewed in the United States on 12 February 2013
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This is a classic memoir by an English intellectual who was drawn into the massacres on the western front as a young officer from 1916 to 1918. Beautifully, elegantly written with an understated elegiac tone of a thinking man seeing his world destroyed. I'm keeping this on my book shelf. I probably won't read it again, but I just feel better having it there, along with other books that have made a real impact on me.
4 people found this helpful
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Sue Matthews
4.0 out of 5 stars Inciteful and compelling real life review
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 7 February 2024
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Studied for Degree. Very well written by a man who saw the ravages of war but found release in seeing the landscape and beauty of friends and nature.
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