Edmund Blunden was an English poet, author and critic. Edmund Blunden was born in London on 1st November 1896, the eldest of nine children.When Edmund was four the family moved to Yalding, Kent, where he discovered the love of rural life and natural history that were to be a major influence on his writing. He was educated at Christ's Hospital and Queen's College, Oxford. 

In 1920 his collection of poetry The Waggoner was published after he sent a privately printed collection of verse to the then Literary Editor of The Daily Herald, Siegfried Sassoon. Sassoon had immediately realised Blunden's abilities and wrote him an encouraging letter, starting a lifelong friendship between the two cricket-playing poets.

In 1922 Blunden's The Shepherd followed, winning him the Hawthorden Prize. The Shepherd included poems from five previously privately printed collections published between 1914 and 1916. In 1928 Blunden published his chronicle of the First World War, Undertones of War, which gained him a wide reputation that was further enhanced by his collection The Poems of Edmund Blunden 1914-1930 published in 1930. His poetry is collected in The Poems of Edmund Blunden, 1914–1930 (1930) and Poems 1930–1940 (1940). Poems of Many Years appeared in 1957. He won the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 1956. Edmund Blunden died on 20 January 1974 at the age of 77 in Long Melford, Suffolk, England.