The controversy over Edmund Blunden's appointment as Professor of Poetry at Oxford in 1966 continued the critical debate waged through his entire poetic career. Hailed as a master of stanzaic and prosodic art, praised for reinstating a traditional formal elegance in verse, Blunden was also labeled a slave of dead conventions, charged with abandoning the ambitions of literary modernism. Blunden was doubtless a "silver" and "occasional" poet. Indeed, his skill with the elegant occasional piece might have gained him the laureateship far more easily than the Oxford professorship, but years of teaching in the Orient had removed him from national fame. Blunden can now be regarded as a major poetic talent, but it is commonly agreed that he failed to achieve his full potential, probably because he failed to experiment in the spirit of his age.

Edmund Charles Blunden was born in London but grew up in the village...