Wilfrid Scawen Blunt is known to historians of literature primarily as a minor poet of the late Victorian and Edwardian periods, the author of The Love Sonnets of Proteus (1881), The Love Lyrics and Songs of Proteus (1892), and other volumes of lyric poetry. He is known to historians as a prominent champion of nationalism, especially Irish, Egyptian, and Indian nationalism, as an opponent of British imperialism, and as a man willing to go to jail for his political beliefs. He was a traveler and explorer. His famous travels included expeditions to Constantinople, Algeria, Egypt, India, Mesopotamia, and Arabia. His most notable venture was the dangerous trip to the Nejd area of the Arabian peninsula, where he and his wife were welcomed by the emir, who gave him several brood mares, the beginning of the Crabbet Arabian Stud still in existence today.

Socially, Blunt was a member of what Gladstone...