Edmund Blunden’s first poem appeared in 1914; but it was this volume, The Shepherd published in 1922, that made his reputation. He is now regarded as one of the best Georgians, a man deeply acquainted with that tradition of English poetry, and a poet of quiet authority and haunting imagination in his own right. He is now widely acclaimed as one of the finest soldier poets of the war. This, an early collection, following on from the Waggoner, is a reflection of his experiences as a young infantry officer on the Western Front. Much of his poetry here is about his time spent fighting round Festubert, on the Somme and in the Ypres sector between the spring of 1916 and the winter of 1917. Poems include ‘Festubert 1916’, ‘The Troubled Spirit’ and ‘Third Ypres, A Reminiscence’, the last of these poems being a harrowing retelling of the Passchendaele offensive and his helplessness as soldiers around him were being killed.