Men of the 10th (Service) Battalion, East Yorkshire Regiment of the 31st Division marching to the frontline, 28 June 1916. By Ernest Brooks (Lieutenant) (Photographer)

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Extracts

Moving World War One poetry to mark Remembrance Day

Poems

A collectible new Penguin Classics series: stunning, clothbound editions of ten favourite poets, which present each poet's most famous book of verse as it was originally published. Designed by the acclaimed Coralie Bickford-Smith and beautifully set, these slim, A format volumes are the ultimate gift editions for poetry lovers. 
 
Poems is Wilfred Owen's only volume of poetry, first published posthumously in 1920 and edited by his friend and mentor, Siegfried Sassoon. Owen is regarded as one of the best poets of World War I and composed nearly all of his poems in just over a year, between August 1917 and September 1918. Owen was virtually unknown at the time of his death, yet his poetic account of a soldier's experience of war has shaped our impression of the horrors of the Western Front. This collection includes the well-known 'Anthem for Doomed Youth' and 'Dulce et Decorum Est'.

Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) was one of the leading poets of the First World War. Brought up in Birkenhead and Shrewsbury, Owen worked as a lay assistant to the vicar of Dunsden before teaching in France the year before the war broke out. In 1915 he enlisted in the Artists Rifles and was wounded in combat in 1917. Recovering from concussion and shell shock in an Edinburgh hospital, Owen met another patient, the poet Siegfried Sassoon, who became his mentor. At this time Owen wrote many of his greatest poems including 'Anthem for Doomed Youth'. In June 1918 Owen returned to France and was awarded the Military Cross for bravery.  He was killed on 4th November 1918, one week before Armistice Day.

Anthem For Doomed Youth

'Tonight he noticed how the women's eyes 
Passed from him to the strong men that were whole.' 
 
The true horror of the trenches is brought to life in this selection of poetry from the front line. 
 
Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. 
 
Wilfred Owen (1893-1918). Owen is available in Penguin Classics in Three Poets of the First World War: Ivor Gurney, Isaac Rosenberg, Wilfred Owen.

'Tonight he noticed how the women's eyes 
Passed from him to the strong men that were whole.'

The Poems of Wilfred Owen

A handsome edition of Owen's poems published to mark the centenary of his birth

Wilfred Owen (Author) Wilfred Owen was born in Oswestry, a Shropshire town close to the Welsh border, on 18 March 1893. Intended first for the church, Owen finally decided at the age of 20 that literature meant more to him than evangelical religion. He was working as a tutor in France when Germany invaded Belgium and war was declared in 1914. Owen enlisted a year later, was commissioned into the 5th (Reserve) Battalion, Manchester Regiment in 1916, and crossed to France at the end of that year. By mid-1917 he was diagnosed as suffering from shellshock, and was invalided back to Craiglockhart War Hospital in Scotland, where he met Siegfried Sassoon. He wrote some of his most powerful war poetry at the start of 1918 before he was declared fit to return to France. Owen was awarded the Military Cross for his service in the last British assaults on the German line, but he did not live to wear it or to see in print most of the poems that would make his name. In the early morning of 4th November 1918, his platoon was caught in heavy fire and Wilfred Owen was killed, only seven days before peace was declared. Jon Stallworthy (Edited by) Jon Stallworthy, born in 1935, is Professor of English at the University of Oxford. He is also a Fellow of Wolfson College, a poet, and literary critic. His works include seven volumes of poetry, and biographies of Wilfred Owen and Louis MacNeice. He has edited several anthologies and is particularly known for his work on war poetry.

The definitive single-volume edition of the work of the greatest poet of the First World War 
2018 marks the centenary of the end of the First World War. This is the definitive single-volume edition of Wilfred Owen’s poems, whose death in battle a few days before the Armistice was the most disastrous loss to English letters since Keats. Containing the texts of all the finished poems of Owen’s maturity and twelve important fragments and with extensive notes, it derives from Jon Stallworthy’s monumental edition of The Complete Poems and Fragments and is aimed at the student and general reader alike. 
 
 ‘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

Three Poets of the First World War

Ivor Gurney, a gifted chorister, composer and poet, was born in 1890. His musical studies were interrupted by the war, during which he suffered a nervous breakdown in 1918. He spent the last fifteen years of his life in mental hospitals, dying of tuberculosis in 1937. 
 
Isaac Rosenberg was born in 1890 and grew up in London's East End. He studied painting at the Slade School before enlisting in the army in 1915. He was killed at the Somme in 1918. 
 
Wilfred Owen, born in 1893, grew up in Shropshire and initially hoped to become a priest. Having become disillusioned with the church, he tutored English in France, but returned to England in 1915 to enlist. He was killed at the front one week before the end of the war. 
 
Jon Stallworthy is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Oxford. He is also a Fellow and Acting President of Wolfson College, a poet, and literary critic. 
 
Jane Potter is a Senior Lecturer in Publishing at Oxford Brookes University. Her monograph is entitled Boys in Khaki, Girls in Print: Women's Literary Responses to the Great War 1914-1918 (2005).

This new selection brings together the poetry of three of the most distinctive and moving voices to emerge from the First World War. Here are the controlled passion and rich metaphors of Wilfred Owen's celebrated verses such as 'Anthem for Doomed Youth' and 'Strange Meeting', along with many of his lesser-known works. The elegiac poems of Ivor Gurney, including 'Requiem' and 'The Silent One', reflect his love of language, music and landscape, while the visceral works of Isaac Rosenberg, such as 'Break of Day in the Trenches', are filled with stark imagery but also, as in 'Louse Hunting', with vitality and humour. Each poet reflects the disparate experiences of ordinary soldiers in war, and attempts to capture man's humanity in the most inhumane of circumstances.

Wilfred Owen

Jon Stallworthy

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.

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

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

'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.

Wilfred Owen

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.

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 ...

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

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.

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 ...

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

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.

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 ...

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

Books by Wilfred Owen

Articles featuring Wilfred Owen

Moving World War One poetry to mark Remembrance Day

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