Collected Letters

Poems of Wilfred Owen, edited by his friend Siegfried Sassoon, was published in 1920. Edmund Blunden's more comprehensive edition of 1931, with its long critical and biographical preface, spread more widely the realization that here was the most important poet of the Great War. Collected Poems, edited by C. Day Lewis, was published in 1963 (and was borne forward on the surge of the new interest springing from Benjamin Britten's War Requiem, a setting of twelve of the poems, including 'Strange Meeting' and 'Anthem for Doomed Youth'). It securely established Owen's place among the great poets.Harold Owen's remarkable and moving autobiographical trilogy has prepared the way for the present Collected Letters. From Journey from Obscurity we learned of the poet's devotion to his mother; now we can see evidence of this. To her he addressed over five hundred and fifty of the six hundred and seventy-three letters here published. She preserved them all, from his first letter in 1898, when he was five, to his last, written four days before his death. To her, indeed, he unfolded his autobiography, the volume now presented to the reader as one of the most complete of such records in our literature. These vivid letters flood Owen's short life with light. They show the way in which he reached his memorable maturity as man and poet; and they illuminate the poems themselves.