Wilfred+Scawen+Blunt's+In+Vinculis


 * Blunt, Wilfred Scawen (1840-1922). //In Vinculis.// London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1889.**


 * Discussion of a copy of the book from the University of Victoria Library, PR4149 B815**

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt was a poet, hedonist, diplomat, Middle Eastern traveller, Arabian horse breeder, political activist, and notorious lover. As a poet Blunt is known best for his love sonnets (initially published under the pseudonym "Proteus"), which described his amorous encounters with more explicit detail than was typical for the Victorian period. He also became politically active during the second half of his life, staunchly anti-imperialistic and supportive of political independence for nations still under the colonization of the British Empire, including Egypt, India, and Ireland. His support of the Irish nationalists in their quest for "Home Rule" (self-governance for domestic issues while remaining part of the United Kingdom) led to his incarceration by the British parliament's Chief Secretary for Ireland in 1888, setting the stage for writing his prison sonnet sequence, //In Vinculis//.

The copy of //In Vinculis// found at the University of Victoria Library contains an interesting book trace: an inscription that tells the reader that the sonnets will please "if you put away your prejudices and principles before reading them". This inscription gives evidence that Blunt's radical politics and amoral lifestyle were polarizing for readers of the time.

This book trace encourages a further examination of the book, which subsequently leads to an investigation into the life of the author, his associations with the Pre-Raphaelites, the political background required to understand the context in which //In Vinculis// was written, the book's reception, and ultimately the author's legacy within the canon of Victorian poetry. What follows is a discussion of the findings from this exploration.


 * Book** **Paratext**

The volume is sized as a pocket book, with cover dimensions 6.75" X 4" (known as a sixteenmo). An embossed cover is wrapped in cream-coloured linen with a green leaf motif framing the front and back covers. The title of the book appears on the front cover and the spine in gold leaf. Pages are trimmed on the top edge and also lined with gold leaf, with cut pages on the bottom and outside edges.


 * Book Cover**

The cover of //In Vinculis// is decorated with a green frame intertwined with clover leaves. The pattern is very characteristic of the Arts and Crafts designs of the period, and in fact was designed by Jane Morris, Pre-Raphaelite model and wife of William Morris, the Pre-Raphaelite poet and painter who co-founded the seminal design firm of Morris and Co. This cover hints at the strong connections that existed between Wilfrid Blunt and the Pre-Raphaelites.


 * Book Contents**

Inscription on flyleaf Title lead page Author portrait Title page with publication information Dedication Preface Contents Sixteen sonnets: "In Vinculis" Sonnets Written in Prison Two songs: "Remember O'Brien!" –Song for the Autumn of 1887, and "Poor Erin"–Song for 1888 Ballad: "The Cannon of Aughrim" Press information


 * Publisher**

In the 1880s, the book's publisher (Kegan Paul, Trench & Co.) developed "a solid reputation in London for serious literature, especially poetry, for religious books and for science" (Howsam 26). The publisher's moto "Arbor Scientiae; Arbor Vitae" translates to "the tree of knowledge and the tree of life" (84).

Printing of the book was done by "Chiswick Press: – C. Whittingham and Co., Tooks Court, Chancery Lane."




 * Biography of Author**

Although Wilfrid Scawen Blunt was born into money -- his aristocratic family had been Sussex landowners for 300 years (Finch, //Blunt// 15-16) -- from a young age he took the side of the weak and underprivileged. However, this socialist focus was directed at others while simultaneously ensuring the inflow of sufficient finances to maintain the lifestyle to which he was accustomed. "If his world politics were to be radical, his domestic creed was always tory [//sic//]" (Longford, "Blunt" ODNB). His mother converted to Catholicism in 1851, and took her children into the Catholic Church as well (Longford, "Blunt" ODNB). She died of tuberculosis when Wilfrid was fifteen. In the following years, two of his closest siblings also succumbed to the disease (Longford, "Blunt" ODNB). These faith-shaking deaths and the current discourse on the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin caused Wilfrid to ultimately turn away from religious belief (Longford, "Blunt" ODNB).

//Travels as a Rich Aristocrat//

Blunt entered the diplomatic service in 1858, serving for eleven years in Europe and South America as secretary of legation (Longford, "Blunt" ODNB). His early posts included Athens (1859 -- where "he bought an ancient white stallion and galloped about, feeling himself a Byronic hero" (Longford, "Blunt" ODNB)), and Frankfurt (1860).



//Affairs and Liaisons//

In Madrid (1862) he took a mistress, Lola, who encouraged him to practice bull fighting, and in Paris (1864) he nearly captured the ambassador's daughter as a conquest (Longford, "Blunt" ODNB). In Lisbon (1865) he became close friends with Robert Lytton, the future governor-general of India (Longford, "Blunt" ODNB), and on holiday in Bordeaux he "enjoyed the least decent period" of his life as the young lover of Catherine Walters, the notorious courtesan Skittles (Blunt, "Secret Memoirs"). This affair led to a variety of romances, some of them celebrated in Blunt's poetry. In Buenos Aires (1867) Blunt had a half-Indian mistress, Anita, and at Bern (1869) it was the wife of a prominent English resident who seemed to be his long-sought ideal love (Longford, "Blunt" ODNB). He was to become a self-confessed hedonist, writing in old age,

"Pleasure is duty, duty pleasure In equal measure." (Blunt, "To a Happy Warrior", //Poetical Works,// 2.8)

//Married Life and Middle Eastern Travels//

When Blunt was with the Diplomatic Corp in Florence, Italy, he met his future wife, Anne Isabella Noel King. Anne was the daughter of the poet Lord Byron's only daughter. Anne's childhood was spent mainly neglected by her parents and primarily raised by her grandmother (Anne Noel, Lady Bryon). Her introduction to Blunt offered an escape from her previously dull life (Archer, "Blunt, Anne" ODNB). This introduction also pleased Blunt immensely, as he had always fancied himself a Byronic figure (Longford, "Blunt" ODNB).

Some interesting side notes on Wilfrid and Anne's parents bear mentioning. Blunt would have been exposed to stories of Lord Byron's exploits by his father, who had gone to school with Lord Byron and had been Byron's junior charge, given menial tasks to do as part of the school's hazing rituals (Longford, "Blunt" ODNB). Anne's mother (Ada King, Lady Lovelace) neglected her daughter because of her work on the Difference and Analytical Engines (early prototypes of the modern computer) with Charles Babbage. Ada became famous in her own right as a mathematician and is known as the first computer programmer and one of the mothers of modern computer science. In fact, "Ada" is a computer programming language named in her honour (Toole, "Byron, Ada" ODNB).

Wilfrid and Anne married in 1869, at which time he retired from the diplomatic service. Their only surviving child, Judith Anne Dorothea, was born in 1870. Soon afterwards the "couple departed on the desert travels that were to build their joint reputations for courage and expertise" (Longford, "Blunt" ODNB). Both shared a love of riding and horses, and after riding through Turkey, Algeria, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and Arabia, they founded their admired "Crabbet Arabian stud" in Egypt and started a successful chapter in their lives as breeders of Arabian horses (Longford, "Blunt" ODNB).

In 1880, at the age of forty, Blunt felt that he had now entered "full manhood—according to his analysis, youth being for feeling, age for meditation, and manhood for battle" (Longford, "Blunt" ODNB) and returned to England to begin another chapter in his life. His travels throughout the British Empire and the Middle East while as a diplomat and after marriage has instilled in him a strong dislike to England's imperialistic meddling in the political structures of its colonized peoples. He became active in politics in the hopes of turning England towards recognizing the need for more political independence and domestic self-autonomy for peoples currently subjugated through colonization (Longford, "Blunt" ODNB).

//Love Sonnets//

Blunt is best known for his love sonnet sequences. As a young man in 1860s Paris and Bordeaux, he fell deeply in love with the famous courtesan Catherine Walters (a.k.a. Skittles), which inspired him to write the narrative poem "Esther" in honour of their love. "They revelled in each other's beauty; Wilfrid had chestnut hair and dark, flashing eyes" (Longford, "Blunt" ODNB). Skittles was also a muse for Blunt's //Sonnets and Songs by Proteus// (1875), and even after the affair was over they remained friends on good terms for the rest of their lives (Aronson, "Skittles" ODNB). A critic whom John Murray, Byron's publishers, consulted about publishing Blunt, reported that his poetry was of a vintage "truly of the grape, not of the gooseberry" (Longford, //Pilgrimage of Passion// 104).

//Pre-Raphaelite Connections//

Another of Blunt's lovers, Jane Morris, designed the cover for //In Vinculis//. This relationship, along with Blunt's friendships with William Morris and other members of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's circle, cemented Blunt's connections with the Pre-Raphaelites.

Jane Morris (née Burden) was a model for several Pre-Raphaelite painters, most notably for Dante Gabriel Rossetti, as she was the muse for many of his later paintings after the death of Elizabeth Siddel (Sharp, "Jane Morris" ODNB). Burden met William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones at the same time as Rossetti, and Morris was so struck by her that he married her in 1859 despite the protests from his family that the marriage was beneath him (McCarthy, "William Morris" ODNB). After a few years of happy marriage and the births of their two children, the couple drifted apart sexually and Jane then became Rossetti's lover for almost a decade (Bullen, "Rossetti" ODNB). Around the time of Rossetti's death in 1882, Jane became a passionate supporter of the Irish "Home Rule" cause, and in 1883 she met Blunt. At this point they started an active correspondence, and by 1887 at the latest the couple had also become lovers (Faukner, //Letters of Jane Morris and Wilfrid Blunt// 1, 15-18). Jane designed the cover for //In Vinculis//, using an Irish Clover motif in reference to the contents. Later, with Jane's influence a revised collection of Blunt's love sonnets was published as a beautiful gift volume in 1892 by the Morris' Kelmscott Press. The book sold out within a fortnight of publication. (Sharp, "Jane Morris" ODNB; Faulkner 41-65).

While Wilfrid Blunt and Jane Morris continued their close association over three decades, Blunt also developed a deep respect and admiration for William Morris, seeking his company and conversation, and commissioning several of Morris' tapestries. William Morris seemed to tolerate the affair similarly as he had done between Jane and Rossetti, responding with "stoic generosity". "It was part of his then radical morality to believe that we are not one another's keepers. Grieving for the loss of love he threw himself more avidly into the manual disciplines of craftwork" (McCarthy, "William Morris" ODNB). When William Morris died in 1896, Blunt wrote glowingly of his respected peer and pleaded with their mutual friend, Edward Burne-Jones, to ensure that the writing of William Morris' biography was put into hands more competent than the writer of Gabriel Dante Rossetti's biography (which had been written by Rossetti's brother William), as "Poor Rossetti's reputation... has been destroyed I fear past mending" (Faukner, //Letters of Jane Morris and Wilfrid Blunt// 105-106).



//Blunt's extravagant hedonism//

After Blunt's incarceration in the Irish Gaols of Galway and Kilmainham, Blunt took his revenge on the Irish Chief Secretary, Arthur Balfour, who had ordered Blunt's arrest and subsequent prosecution, by setting his attentions on Balfour's dear friend and platonic confidant, Mary Charteris, the Countess of Wemyss, who was also scandalously Blunt's cousin (Ridley and Percy, "Charteris" ODNB). In 1895, accompanied by her children and their governess, Mary went to stay in Egypt with her cousin. They camped in the desert and in his diary Blunt noted proudly that between her tent and his "there were Mary's naked tell-tale footsteps in the sand" (Longford, //Pilgrimage of Passion// 312). Mary returned to England pregnant by Blunt.

The 1890s saw Blunt's hedonism in its last and most extravagant phase, when he could name as the objects of his romance women such as Lady Gregory, the virginal Margot Asquith, Lady Blanche Hozier, Lady Margaret Sackville, and Dorothy Carleton (Longford, "Blunt" ODNB).

Finally, Blunt's wife, Lady Anne (who had continued to divide her time between England and Egypt) had enough of her husband's excesses, and formally separated from him in 1906. After their separation Lady Anne rented a house in England near Blunt's estate at Crabbet Park, where she lived with her daughter Judith's family (Archer, "Blunt, Anne" ODNB). But Anne only felt truly at home while wintering in Egypt at their horse breeding estate, "the East having become an integral part of her life." She was held in honour by her many Arab friends (having learned to speak fluid Arabic many years earlier), to whom she was "the noble lady of the horses" (Archer, "Blunt, Anne" ODNB). She died in Cairo in 1917.

Blunt kept a diary for much of his adult life, and published portions of it in //The Secret Occupation of Egypt// (1907), //India under Lord Ripon// (1909), //Gordon at Khartoum// (1911), and //My Diaries// (2 vols., 1919–20). The diary itemized "Blunt's sexual exploits in considerable detail, including the names of his conquests," so to protect those still living he had ordered it sealed after his death and deposited in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge for safekeeping. It was opened in 1972 (fifty years after his death in 1922) and this allowed for a more complete biography of his life to be written (Longford, "Blunt" ODNB). The Wilfrid Scawen Blunt Archive bequeathed to the Fitzwilliam Museum is the largest single holding of works by and associated with Blunt. "It contains autograph manuscripts, annotated proofs, his original diaries and transcribed memoirs. It further holds his voluminous correspondence and various photographs and sketches, amongst which the famed picture of Blunt with W.B. Yeats and Ezra Pound. Last but not least, the archive preserves the records of his sexual exploits and the hair locks of some of his mistresses" (Fitzwilliam, "Blunt").


 * Political context to //In Vinculis//**

To understand the context from which //In Vinculis// was written, a brief summary of the current political climate of Victorian Britain in the 1880s is required.

The formal beginnings of the Irish "Home Rule" movement in support of domestic political autonomy started with the creation of the Irish Home Government Association by Isaac Butt, an Irish MP at Westminster, in 1870. In 1873 the group was re-branded as the Home Rule League.

In 1880, the growth of the "Home Rule" movement was becoming a significant political force within the British Parliament. The Liberals under William Ewart Gladstone were the ruling party for much of the decade, but the party had to walk a fine line between implementing liberal political reforms (such as the Married Women's Property Act in 1882 that gave married women the same rights over their property as unmarried women, and the Corrupt and Illegal Practices Act in 1883 that attempted to limit bribery and intimidation in elections and allow poorer candidates to run) and appealing to the conservative elements within the party that were essential to maintaining rule.

The number of Irish MPs within the Home Rule League grew to the point that in 1885 under new leader Charles Stewart Parnell, they held the balance of power within subsequent minority governments (a short-lived Conservative minority in 1885, followed by a Liberal minority in 1886). Failure of Gladstone's first Home Rule bill in 1886 led to the Liberal's defeat as a contingent of Liberal MPs opposed to Home Rule broke away from the party (forming the Liberal Unionist Party) and supported the Conservatives.

Blunt had long been concerned about the plight and struggles of landless Irish peasant farmers at the centre of the Irish "Land War". Blunt became the first British member of the Irish Parliamentary Party (the renamed Home Rule Association). Blunt was offered seats to run for in several Irish constituencies, but he refused these as he felt it would only be meaningful for the Home Rule cause if he won an English seat in Commons in order to take the cause to the oppressors (Going, "Wilde and Blunt" 27). In 1885 he stood for parliament as a Tory Democrat supporting Irish Home Rule, and was defeated in Camberwell North. He fought as a candidate for Kidderminster for the Liberal Home Rulers in 1886, but lost by 285 votes (Longford, "Blunt" ODNB).

On 25 October 1887 Blunt chaired an anti-eviction meeting supporting impoverished Irish tenant farmers who were being evicted from their farms by absentee landlords for not being able to make rent in Woodford, Galway, that had been expressly banned by Arthur Balfour, the newly appointed Irish Chief Secretary within the now Tory minority government. Balfour had recently introduced a new "Crimes Bill" (the Perpetual Crimes / Coercion Act of 1887), which was designed to crush the "Home Rule" movement (Mackay and Matthew, "Balfour" ODNB). Blunt was arrested, tried, and imprisoned, first in Galway gaol then in Kilmainham, Dublin, from 3 January to 6 March 1888. Meanwhile he stood as an anti-coercion candidate for Deptford, losing by 275 votes. One of the headlines prior to the election in //The Times// (of London) read: "Mr. Wilfrid Blunt, Anti-Coercionist Candidate for Deptford. Who is he? What has he done? Why is he in prison?" (National Press Agency, "Mr. Wilfrid..." 1888).

Blunt's very public staging of the meeting on 25 October 1887 was intended to bring attention to the Irish Home Rule cause, and his subsequent arrest did make waves throughout the UK and world press. For example, in the //New York Times// it was reported that upon Blunt's guilty verdict for seditious speech he was immediately "conveyed to the jail... followed by a large crowd, whom the police attempted to avoid by a ruse. This proved futile, and a conflict occurred between the crowd and the police, during which swords and batons were used. Several persons were injured." (NYT, "WILFRID..." 8 January 1888), and Toronto's //Globe// newspaper reported that the English PM's "recent assertions that the law is the same for England and Ireland is destroyed by Mr. Blunt's conviction. The new Tory doctrine that meetings [in Ireland] may be suppressed on the hypothesis that the speakers may intend to say something seditious... [is] a subversion of the fundamental law of England" ( Globe, "WILFRID..." 10 January 1888). //The Globe// also reported on the condition of Blunt in prison. Initially, Blunt refused to wear the prison garb given to him unless he could also wear his overcoat, and at one point stripped naked in protest of not being able to wear his own clothes so that his only coverings were his thin prison blanket (Globe, "WILFRID..." 16 January 1888).

Blunt also wrote numerous letters to //The Times// (of London) and gave interviews, even going so far as to stage portraits in prison garb for the press. This led to over 7,500 newspaper articles worldwide referencing Blunt from the period of 1880-1889 (British Newspaper Archive, "Wilfrid Scawen Blunt").

//In Vinculis'// dedication is linked to Blunt's political activism on behalf of the people of Ireland, and for such he became "the first Englishman put in prison for Ireland's sake" (Lady Gregory, //Preface to// //My Diaries//).


 * Poems contained within //In Vinculis//**

The book starts with a cycle of sixteen sonnets "written in prison".

First sonnet "Written in Prison" and second sonnet (source: photo taken of copy of "In Vinculis" at University of Victoria Library)

Two songs follow the main sonnet sequence: "Remember O'Brien!" Song for the Autumn of 1887 - William O'Brien was an Irish MP and Home Rule leader that was imprisoned in September of 1887 under the same Perpetual Crimes Act (1887) (one of the Coercion Acts) that imprisoned Blunt later in 1888. "Poor Erin" Song for 1888 - "Erin" was an archaic name for "Ireland" that is used poetically here by Blunt.

A long 39-page ballad fills out the volume: "The Cannon of Aughrim" - The Battle of Aughrim in 1691 (between British Protestant forces and Irish Catholic supporters attempting to restore the Catholic James II to rule) was one of the bloodiest ever fought on Irish soil.


 * Reception of //In Vinculis//**

While the common pattern of Victorian sonnet cycles were for them to be written after the event discussed as "emotion recollected in tranquillity" (Wordsworth, "Preface to Lyrical Ballads"), Blunt's sonnet cycle //In Vinculis// was written while imprisoned at the Galway and Kilmainham gaols. ("In Vinculis" is Latin for "in chains".) Even though he was not provided with writing materials by his gaolers, he managed to record secretly sixteen sonnets on scraps of paper and on the leaves of his prayer book (Blunt, //Preface to In Vinculis//).

Blunt's timely publication of //In Vinculis// was required to capitalize on the recent publicity Blunt had received from the press in an effort to further support the "Home Rule" cause, but critical reception to the sonnet cycle was generally not favourable, with the consensus that the effort had been a hurried affair coloured by the immediate temperament of Blunt under the duress of imprisonment. A critic from the //National Review// believed the book to be "the mistake of a poet... Doubtless its composition went far to make the tedium of prison life bearable, but it is full of hysterical screaming, and some of us would forget it gladly" (Going, "Wilde and Blunt" 28).

One favourable review Blunt received was from Oscar Wilde. "In Vinculis," Wilde stated, "stirs one by its fine sincerity of purpose, its lofty and impassioned thought, its depth and ardour of intense feeling... an unjust imprisonment for a nobel cause strengthens as well as deepens the nature" (Going, "Wilde and Blunt" 28). After Blunt was flattered by Wilde's praise the two men began an intellectual friendship within their respective social circles, and entries on Wilde continued to appear in Blunt's diaries until Wilde's death in 1900 (Faukner, //Letters of Jane Morris and Wilfrid Blunt//).

Ultimately, one of the Blunt's prose artifacts created from his Irish imprisonment experiences had the most lasting impact. "Mr. Blunt's Memorandum on Prison Reform, Especially as to the Treatment of Political Prisoners" was one of the first documents requested by Winston Churchill after he became Home Secretary in 1910, and it became a core reference to Churchill for policies he put in place to improve the conditions for war as well for political prisoners (Blunt, //My Diaries//, 2.445-451; Guedalla, //Mr. Churchill// 131).

Overall, a good indication of the enduring popularity of //In Vinculis// can be ascertained from its printing history. The copy found in the University of Victoria Library is a first edition, and beyond the //In Vinculis'// inclusion in volumes of Blunt's collected works, there is no further record of subsequent printings of the book in the British Library Catalog Database. In contrast, the love sonnet cycles written by Blunt were reprinted numerous times; for example, the copy of //The Love Sonnets of Proteus// found in the University of Victoria Library is a fifth edition.


 * Blunt's Legacy**

Blunt regarded his political and philosophical poetry to be as important as his love poetry, as "behind [all] his poetry lay the philosophy of life drawn from wide experience" (Finch, //Blunt// 339). When asked by his literary executors near the end of his life to arrange his collected works for publication, Blunt stipulated that his political poems must be included, saying that "I have felt as deeply and strongly about certain aspects of what are called world politics as I have about love" (338-339). When Macmillan published the two volumes of the //Poetical Works of Wilfrid Scawen Blunt// in October, 1914, the poet was content when the only critical reviews were "hostile... on political rather than literary grounds" (339).

Modern criticism of //In Vinculis// has found it to be "the least satisfactory of Blunt's six sonnet sequences" (Going, "Wilde and Blunt" 27). However, as a historical artifact, the book has much of interest in it. As a poet, Blunt continues to be best known as the author of his love sonnet sequences, and he inspired several twentieth century poets, including William Butler Yeats and Ezra Pound. In fact, an homage to Blunt was organized by Yeats and Pound at Blunt's estate in 1914, attended by several elite poets of the day, where they presented Blunt with an inscribed bust and served a peacock in full plumage for the feast. Controversial until the end, some of the invited poets (including the current Poet Laureate) felt it would be politically incorrect to attend in person, so they sent poems written to Blunt with their regrets (Going, "A Peacock Dinner" 303-304).

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt's poetry can be studied both for its own merits and as a touchstone for the Victorian period in which they were written.

G.J.Engl386.UVic.Spring2016


 * Works Cited**

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Blunt, Wilfred Scawen. //In Vinculis.// London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1889. Print.

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"Mr. Wilfrid Blunt, Anti-Coercionist Candidate for Deptford. Who is he? What has he done? Why is he in prison?" London: National Press Agency, 1888. British Library Item Holdings. Web. 26 March 2016.

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