Wilfred Owen, one of the finest poets of World War I, was also one of its most-mourned casualties. The poet was survived not only by the verse upon which his reputation is founded, but also by the thousands of letters he wrote from the age of five to the eve of his death at the age of twenty-five. Selected Letters of Wilfred Owen includes some early examples, but concentrates on the correspondence of the poet's last seven years--the period in which he came into his own as an artist.
On a journey that would take him deep into the wilderness, the author sets out in the footsteps of St Anthony, the founder of monasticism. In a hermit's cell in the heart of the Egyptian Sinai Desert, he lived alone. This book contains letters which are an honest exploration of the ways in which we are formed by others.
This volume contains all of Owen's best known work, only four of which were published in his lifetime. His war poems were based on his acute observations of the soldiers with whom he served on the Western front, and reflect the horror and waste of World War One.
This new, select edition of Wilfred Owen's letters provides a fresh understanding of the poet's life in his own words. Wilfred Owen's fame as one of the great war poets of the twentieth century is unsurpassed, with Dulce et Decorum est possibly the defining piece of World War literature. Owen's letters reveal the man behind the cultural icon; human with all his foibles, whose 25 years were marked by great highs and lows, by emerging modernity, and the violence of war. Evocative, lyrical, and often surprisingly funny, the letters act as both autobiography and companion to the famous war poems. He was both an accomplished poet and one of the finest letter-writers of the twentieth century. Accompanied by new notes and new introduction, as well as previously redacted and omitted material, the new edition of Owen's Selected Letters brings together past and contemporary scholarship to provide fresh insights into Owen's character and poetic development.
Wilfred Owen is the poet of pity, the voice of the soldier maimed, blinded, traumatised and killed, not just in the Great War, but in all wars since, so resonant has his message become. Although he saw only five of his poems published in his lifetime, he left behind a portfolio of poetry and letters that created a powerful legacy.This generously illustrated book tells the story of Wilfred Owen's life and work anew, from his birth in 1893 until his death one week before the Armistice on 4 November 1918. It chronicles Owen's journey from a romantic youth, steeped in the poetry of Keats, to mature soldier awakened to the horrors of the Western Front. Drawing on rich archival material such as personal books, artefacts, family photographs and numerous manuscripts, the volume takes a fresh look at Owen's apprenticeship and eventual mastery of poetry, giving a comprehensive view of the relationship between his lived experience and his writing. Those already familiar with or well-versed in Owen's work will find new material in this book, and those coming to Owen for the first time will enjoy a well researched, yet accessible, illustrated introduction to one of the twentieth century's greatest poets.
“The very content of Owen’s poems was, and still is, pertinent to the feelings of young men facing death and the terrors of war.” —The New York Times Book Review Wilfred Owen was twenty-two when he enlisted in the Artists’ Rifle Corps during World War I. By the time Owen was killed at the age of 25 at the Battle of Sambre, he had written what are considered the most important British poems of WWI. This definitive edition is based on manuscripts of Owen’s papers in the British Museum and other archives.
What would you ask if you could write ten letters to your future self? How might they reply? In 2017, three people got the chance to find out. Yet with access to the future come even greater surprises in the present... Letters to 2039 examines hope, despair and human development. It explores our tendency for solipsism, even when faced with the chance to receive unprecedented insight into the future, and about how we might help others. At a time when planning for and predicting the future seems to have found its cultural counterpart in mindfulness, and when quantifiable outcomes have become the favoured yardstick of progress, this book looks at the tensions between the present and the future, as well as the unpredictability of the human experience.
Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg, and Charles Sorley all died in the First Word War. They came from diverse social, educational, and cultural backgrounds, but for all of the writers, engagement with Greek and Roman antiquity was decisive in shaping their war poetry. The world views and cultural hinterlands of Brooke and Sorley were framed by the Greek and Latin texts they had studied at school, whereas for Owen, who struggled with Latin, classical texts were a part of his aspirational literary imagination. Rosenberg's education was limited but he encountered some Greek and Roman literature through translations, and through mediations in English literature. The various ways in which the poets engaged with classical literature are analysed in the commentaries, which are designed to be accessible to classicists and to users from other subject areas. The extensive range of connections made by the poets and by subsequent readers is explained in the Introduction to the volume. The commentaries illuminate relationships between the poems and attitudes to the war at the time, in the immediate post-war years, and subsequently. They also probe how individual poems reveal various facets of the poetry of unease, the poetry of survival, and the poetics of war and ecology. References to the accompanying online Oxford Classical Receptions Commentaries will enable readers to follow up their special interests. This volume differs from the shorter volume Greek and Roman Antiquity in First World War Poetry: Making Connections in that it covers the whole output of the four poets, and not just their war poems.
