Blunden Edmund - Edmund Blundens Undertones of war

The editor gratefully acknowledges:

Major J.F. Ainsworth for some details in an index he compiled in 1999; Alexandra Barford for alerting me to the existence of James Casselss annotated Undertones; Martin Chown for use of his invaluable guide to the key landmarks of the memoir and for material in his own index to the book; Elizabeth Bridges and Clifford Jones at Christs Hospital for guiding me through the archive and to the Christs Hospital Foundation for kindly granting use of pictures and articles; Jean Cannon at the University of Texas, Austin, for her generous and reassuring assistance; Carcanet Press for extracts from Desmond Grahams The Truth of War and Robyn Marsacks Blunden editions; the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University in the City of New York for permission to cite from the Edmund Blunden Papers; Alfred Corn for translating a Latin inscription on p. lxix; Duckworth & Co. for the use of material in Martin Taylors Overtones of War; Dean Echenberg (Dean Echenberg War Poetry Collection, http://www.war-poetry.com/) for copying and allowing us to reproduce part of the De Bello manuscript in his remarkable archive; Lucy Edgeley, Blundens daughter, for providing the The Midnight Skaters manuscript; Alun Edwards for an extract from his article about the Blunden papers in Texas; the English Society of the University of Hong Kong, A.A.H.K.U.S.U., for permission to quote from the Blunden Festschrift; Chris Fletcher at the Bodleian for assistance with research; Rosie and Katie Greening for their advice as editor and author respectively; the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas in Austin, for allowing us to reproduce documents and illustrations; Kathy Henson and Sue Hart for help with background research; the University of Iowa Libraries for permission to reproduce materials from their Blunden collection; Matthew Jones and the West Sussex Record Office for allowing us to browse the archive and reproduce images, and for the wealth of material now emerging at www.westsussex.org.uk through the Great War West Sussex 191418 project; Joanna Halpin Jones for her photographs of items from the family archive; Professor Tim Kendall for advising on editions and for his work in maintaining Blundens reputation as a war poet; Barbara Levy and the estate of Siegfried Sassoon for the use of Blundens letters to his friend; Katharine Lindsay and Stuart Lee at the First World War Poetry Digital Archive for their help and particularly for Katharines photographs, which figure prominently in the book; Ken Mansell for information about the clock at Christs Hospital; Robyn Marsack for her many contributions to the preparation and for her excellent new Blunden edition, Fall In, Ghosts: Selected War Prose; Nicholas Murray for his informal assistance and for the insights in his book on the war poets; the National Archives in Kew for permission to reproduce various military documents; the National Portrait Gallery for permission to reproduce the cover image by Ralph Hodgson; Rennie Parker for the very useful edition of Blundens poems she prepared with Margi Blunden; Pen & Sword Books Ltd and the authors Philip Guest and Heather McPhail for permission to quote from On the Trail of the Poets of the Great War: Edmund Blunden; Penguin Books for the use of the digital files of their own edition (the third, revised edition); Pickering and Chatto for permission to quote from Blundens letters to Sassoon; Steven Pollard, Old Blue, and loyal supporter of this project, for accompanying me on a visit to Christs Hospital and (with Stuart Henson, Claire Sarkies, and Bill Skinner) for keeping me cheerful during the writing of the book; Harry Ricketts for his personal encouragement and for the strange meetings he has imagined; Paul Reed for clarifications of the transcript of Over the Sacks; Carol Rothkopf for her eagle-eyed attention to my text and for permission to use manuscripts and quote from her editions of Blundens letters to Sassoon and Hector Buck; the Sexton Press, and the late Jack Morpurgo for extracts from More Than a Brother; Jane Siegel at Columbia University for guidance and for permission to reproduce documents in the collection; the late Jon Stallworthy, from whom we learned a more profound appreciation of wars undertones; Alan Jenkins at the Times Literary Supplement for the copy of a review of Blundens poetry; the late Martin Taylor for his peerless edition of the poetry; Michael Turner for his essay, Blundens Revisions to Undertones of War in the Oxford Society of Bibliophiles 1972 tribute to John Sparrow (see Introduction n. 151, p. lxviii); the University Library, Cambridge; Barry Webb, whose work on Blundens life and achievement has seldom been far from my desk; and to his publisher, Yale University Press, for allowing us to use extracts from a book that the poet would surely have appreciated: Edmund Blunden: A Biography.

I am immensely grateful to my wife, Jane, for twice reading the entire book aloud for purposes of comparison of editions, and for her unfailing encouragement.

Thanks to my tireless editors Jacqueline Baker, Rachel Platt, Kate Gilks, Joy Mellor, and especially Miranda Bethell for her scrupulous attention to the text (and for her many improvements); and to Edmund Blundens agent at David Higham Associates, Georgia Glover, who initiated the project.

My greatest debt must be to Margi Blunden and her family for their constant support and in particular for Margis wisdom, generosity, and calm efficiency in the many contributions she has made to the research and preparation of this edition.