Complete Poems by Wilfred Owen

Wilfred Owen was born in 1893 in Plas Wilmot, near Oswestry in Shropshire. He worked as a teacher of English as a Foreign Language and was tutoring in France when war was declared against Germany. He enlisted in 1915 and fought for two years before suffering from concussion and trench fever. He was sent to recover at Craiglockart War Hospital, near Edinburgh where he introduced himself to the established poet Siegfried Sassoon, who was also a patient. Sassoon encouraged Owen to write and worked with him on some of his poems.When he was recovered, Owen was posted back to France where he won the military cross but was killed on the bank of the Oise-Sambre Canal just a week before the end of the war.Only five of Owen's poems were published while he was alive. Sassoon collected his poems and published then in 1920. It has been said that Owen's poems shaped the attitude of a generation to the futility and tragedy of war, exemplified by his own life.This edition includes all Owen's known poems, his Preface to his poems, an Introduction by Siegfried Sassoon and a Memoir by Edmund Blunden.