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  • Published: 31 August 2013
  • ISBN: 9781448181339
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 144

The War Poems Of Wilfred Owen




Wilfred Owen was the greatest poet of the First World War - his best work is collected here, published in a new hardback edition to commemorate the end of the war that Owen has taught us never to forget

'Orpheus, the pagan saint of poets, went through hell and came back singing. In twentieth-century mythology, the singer wears a steel helmet and makes his descent "down some profound dull tunnel" in the stinking mud of the Western Front. For most readers of English poetry, the face under that helmet is that of Wilfred Owen.' Professor Jon Stallworthy, from his Introduction.

When Wilfred Owen was killed in the days before the Armistice in 1918, he left behind a shattering, truthful and indelible record of a soldier's experience of the First World War. His greatest war poetry has been collected, edited and introduced here by Professor Jon Stallworthy. This special edition is published to commemorate the end of the hellish war that Owen, though the hard-won truth and terrible beauty of his poetry, has taught us never to forget.

  • Published: 31 August 2013
  • ISBN: 9781448181339
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 144

About the author

Wilfred Owen

Wilfred Owen MC was one of the leading English poets of the First World War. He volunteered on 21st October 1915. He saw a good deal of front-line action: he was blown up, concussed and suffered shell-shock. At Craiglockhart, the psychiatric hospital in Edinburgh, he met Siegfried Sassoon who inspired him to develop his war poetry.

He was sent back to the trenches in September, 1918 and in October won the Military Cross by seizing a German machine-gun and using it to kill a number of Germans.

On 4th November he was shot and killed near the village of Ors. The news of his death reached his parent’s home as the Armistice bells were ringing on 11 November 1918.

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Praise for The War Poems Of Wilfred Owen

Others have shown the disenchantment of war, have unlegended the roselight and romance of it, but none with such compassion for the disenchanted or such sternly just and justly stern judgment on the idyllisers.

Guardian, 1920

For me, he is the greatest of all the war poets.... it is Owen's intense respect for the soldier that makes his poetry so powerful. Those who did not return have their meticulously maintained stone memorials on the fields of Flanders. But their memorial in our minds is largely built by Wilfred Owen

Jeremy Paxman, Spectator

The greatest of all the War Poets… This edition…is a must for every poetry lover

Emma Lee-Potter, Independent