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EDMUND BLUNDEN (1896-1974)
A 2pp. a.l.s. by Blunden, unaddressed, but dated 12 March 1922, to H.M. Tomlinson, describing a sea journey to Argentina and the carnival there: 'There were mosquitoes the size of sea eagles, which ate me all night wherever I went. The whisky in Buenos A. is turpentine, and I fall back on beer, but by any other name it would have been as watery. There was a carnival on during our stay there; women of devastating beauty dressed up as gipsies, butterflies, Lucreze Borgia, &c, drove in procession through the town, while enormous crowds trampled on eachothers' straw hats along the pavement and attached themselves to the young women by means of paper streamers ... '; and a collection of 2 undated manuscript book reviews for 'The Nation', and 21 a.l.s. by Blunden, dating from 1923-24, to H.M. Tomlinson, from home in Stansfield, Nr. Clare, Suffolk, or from Kikufuji Hotel, Hongo, Tokyo, Japan, the majority humorous or satirical in tone, several parodying the militarism of the recently finished First World War. (24)

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LITERATURE:
Barry Webb Edmund Blunden (New Haven and London, 1990)
Blunden's biographer records that 'under the editorship of H.W. Massingham, assisted by H.M. Tomlinson, the Nation had won Edmund's favour at the end of the war, partly becuase its forthright comments had made it a more or less banned publication on the Western front' (p. 107). Massingham and Tomlinson, who had connections with the ship-owning Tunciman family, persuaded Blunden 'to take a voyage to South America on the cargo boat SS Trefusis "to do something to take away the taste of Stuff Trench."' In December 1921 Blunden was 'preparing to join the ship which would take him across the Atlantic and up the River Plate to Buenos Aires and back over three months ... before leaving he had been introduced by Tomlinson to the American publisher, G.P. Putnam, who asked for the option of an account of the journey ... published in December 1922 as The Bonaventure' (pp. 131-32).

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