Wilfred Owen

Who2 Biography: Wilfred Owen, Poet / Soldier

Source

Born: 18 March 1893
Birthplace: Plas Wilmot, England
Died: 4 November 1918
Best Known As: English poet of World War I

Name at birth: Wilfred Edward Salter Owen

Wilfred Owen is considered one of the great English poets of World War I, inspired by his experiences on the front lines in France to write about the morbid absurdity of war. Owen was working as a tutor in Europe when the war broke out in 1914. On a visit to England in 1915 he enlisted and was eventually sent into combat in France. In 1917 he was sent back to the United Kingdom with a case of neurasthenia ("shell shock"), and ended up meeting poets Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves at a hospital in Edinburgh. With Sassoon's encouragement, Owen began writing naturalistic poems about the horrors of war, while experimenting with poetic forms. In 1918 he returned to military service and in August was sent back to the front lines in France. He was killed by a German counter-attack on 4 November 1918, a mere five days before the signing of the armistice that ended the war. Most of his poems were published posthumously and, thanks in large part to Sassoon, Owen's reputation grew in the 1920s and '30s. His poems include "The Last Laugh" (which begins with the line "'Oh, Jesus Christ, I'm hit,' he said, and died") and "Dulce Et Decorum Est," in which he mocks "the old lie" that it's honorable to die for one's country.

Search unanswered questions...

Browse: Unanswered questions | Most-recent questions | Reference library

5min Related Video: Wilfred Owen

Top

Biography: Wilfred Owen

Top

Although he lived only 25 years, the British poet Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) became one of the most well known of the War Poets, a school of English lyricists who wrote of their experiences and impressions during World War I. Four months at war was all that he needed to grasp his subject, which was not the heroism of war, but the pity of it.

Born in Oswestry, England, on March 18, 1893, Owen was the eldest of four children raised by parents of modest means. His father held a job with the railway. His mother was strict in her religious beliefs yet generous in her affections for her children. In their evangelical Anglican household, Owen and his siblings were well versed in biblical themes and teachings. Although by his twentieth year Owen would renounce his evangelist faith, Christian imagery remained strong in his imagination and often registered prominently in his poetry.

Owen's family moved to Birkenhead in 1897, and from 1900 to 1907 he attended the Birkenhead Institute. A subsequent move to Shrewsbury prompted his transfer to the Shrewsbury Technical School at the age of 14. By this time, Owen had already felt the pull toward poetry, and his mother warmly encouraged these ambitions. Desiring a higher education, he studied botany at University College, Reading, before matriculating at the University of London. A shortage of money for tuition fees eventually forced Owen to withdraw, however, and in 1911 he sought work at a vicarage in Dunsden, a town near Reading. There he lived for 18 months as a pupil and lay assistant to Reverend Herbert Wigan. At the parish he worked with the sick and the elderly, the illiterate and the destitute, developing a compassion that would inform his later work as both a soldier and a poet. While he was sensitive to the hardships of the parishioners, Owen struggled with his own belief in the redemptive power of Christianity.

During a bout with depression, Owen suffered a physical and emotional collapse that put an end to his stay at Dunsden. In February 1913 he recuperated at home in Shrewsbury, where he remained for six months. By September he had taken a position teaching English at the Berlitz School in Bordeaux, France. After a year of working at the school, Owen stayed on in France to serve as a tutor for young boys. In the summer of 1914, he worked for a family at Bagneres de Bigorre in the Pyrenees, where he met the French poet Laurent Tailhade. By December, he had returned to Bordeaux to tutor for an expatriate British family. During his time abroad he had gone home only to visit, but talk of war eventually drew him back to England. It was with plans to enlist in his country's armed forces that Owen took leave of France in the late summer of 1915.

Joined the War

By autumn, Owen had begun his training with the 3/ 28th London Regiment, later known as the 2nd Artists Rifles Officers Training Corps. After serving in this capacity for eight months, he was commissioned into the 2nd Battalion Manchester Regiment at Milford Camp, near Witley. There he demonstrated resourcefulness and ingenuity: With a fellow officer, he designed an improvement to the gas mask. More than a year later, in October 1917, he would write the poem "Dulce et Decorum Est," in which an episode with lethal gas sends soldiers into "[a]n ecstasy of fumbling,/ Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time." Although the poem describes the senseless horrors of war, its title ironically evokes a Latin quotation from Horace: "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori," or "Sweet and decorous it is to die for one's country."

Months would pass before Owen began to acquire the intimate knowledge of war that he would bring to his poetry. In total, he completed 14 months of training, including a musketry course that he took at Mychett Camp in Farnborough in July 1916. Classified as 1st-Class Shot at the end of the course, he rejoined the Manchesters at Witley Camp later in the summer. It was not until January 1917 that his regiment was drafted to the Infantry Base Depot at Etaples, France. Within days, they joined the front line at Serre, where Owen was put in charge of "A" company. Though Owen did not remain on the front line, he and his men embarked on a risky mission to occupy a former German bunker in No Man's Land. An incident there, in which a sentry that he had posted was blinded during a bombardment, later became the subject of his poem "The Sentry." He and his men endured the extreme cold of those winter days; many suffered from frostbite and one soldier froze to death before he could be evacuated to safety. Owen was beginning to amass the difficult experiences that he would write about so compellingly.

After a month of combat, Owen was sent to join a Transport Officers' Course at Abbeville. It was a coveted position, safely away from the front line. In Abbeville he stayed in a house that lacked heat, and his milk and other goods froze, but that did not deter him from writing such poems as "Exposure" and "Happiness." As always, he corresponded with his mother faithfully, reporting on his work as a soldier and poet. But Owen's sojourn in Abbeville was brief, and he returned to his battalion on March 1. Shortly thereafter, on March 14, he suffered a concussion from a fall and was sent home. He soon recovered and returned to the line. Yet he was again unwell by May 1917, and was diagnosed as being a victim of shell shock and trench fever. After being treated at a casualty clearing station, he returned to England for further care, first at Netley Hospital in Hampshire, and later at Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh.

Honed His Poetic Powers

It was while recovering at the hospital in Edinburgh that Owen met Siegfried Sassoon, an army captain and an established poet who wrote passionately of his experiences in the war. The meeting marked a turning point in Owen's career as a poet. Sassoon admired the younger writer's poetry and encouraged him to keep going, pushing him to further develop his style. He introduced Owen to the writer Robert Graves and others, welcoming him into a circle of intellectuals and validating his stature as a fellow poet. At first Sassoon's influence was perhaps too strong, and Owen began to write poetry that echoed his contemporary's style. But he soon found his own unique approach to writing about the war; his style matured, as did his characteristic use of such techniques as pararhyme, alliteration, and assonance.

Meeting Sassoon sparked a bout of creativity in Owen, who had begun penning his finest verses during his recuperation at Edinburgh. In October 1917, just prior to his discharge from Craiglockhart, he wrote "Greater Love" ("Red lips are not so red/As the stained stones kissed by the English dead") and "Anthem for Doomed Youth" ("What passing bells for those who die as cattle?/ - Only the monstrous anger of the guns"). After a three-week leave, which he had been granted upon his discharge from the hospital, Owen was posted to the 5th Manchesters, a reserve battalion based in Yorkshire, England. His duties included acting as a mess secretary at Clarence Gardens Hotel (now the Clifton Hotel) in Scarborough. When he was able to take time away from his clerical duties, the poet escaped to his room to write. Here he produced "Miners," the first of his poems to be published.

Owen's reprieve from the war was further extended when he was assigned to a post at Ripon Army Camp in March 1918. Here he was able to rent a quiet cottage in the rural outskirts of Borrage Lane. This was a productive period for Owen, in which he wrote and rewrote such poems as "Strange Meeting," "Futility," and "Mental Cases." His experience with shell shock, as well as his encounters with other troubled men in the psychiatric hospital, figured prominently in many of these poems. He remained at Ripon until he was fit for service, and returned to the 5th Manchesters in June 1918. Two months later Sassoon returned from battle severely wounded, and Owen was able to visit him in the hospital. Their reunion was brief, as Owen was to go off once again to the war in France, rejoining the 2nd Manchesters as an officer reinforcement in September 1918.

Killed in Action

It did not take long for Owen to become reacquainted with the horrors of war. His battalion was to advance upon the Beaurevoir-Fonsomme Line, originally known as the Hindenburg Support Line. It was a German-occupied territory organized into trenches and concrete fortifications - the last such territory to be attacked by the British before open warfare ensued. When the 2nd Manchesters launched their attack on October 1, 1918, they successfully challenged the enemy's defenses. Owen was one of a number of men who captured a German gun position and resisted a harsh counter-attack, advancing to the farthest point occupied by the British along the western front. It was a victory for England as well as for Owen, who was recommended for a Military Cross for his fine leadership during the battle.

Owen was proud of his Military Cross, but he did not live long enough to fully relish his achievements. He was killed in action by the banks of the Sambre-Oise canal near the French town of Ors on November 4, 1918 - just one week before the armistice. During his final battle, in which the battalion attempted to cross the canal to attack the Germans who held the opposite bank, Owen was last seen traversing the canal on a raft, in a hail of artillery fire. In his last letter to his mother, written not far from the canal, in the basement of a house in Pommereuil, Owen assured her that he was happy and, at least momentarily, safe. He wrote: "I am more oblivious than alas yourself, dear Mother, of the ghastly glimmering of the guns outside, and the hollow crashing of the shells. There is no danger down here, or if any, it will be well over before you read these lines."

News of Owen's death did not reach his home at Shrewsbury until November 11, the day that marked the end of the Great War. The poetry was all that remained, and the poet's admirers were determined to see them published. In 1919, seven of his poems appeared in Wheels and, in the following year, Sassoon took on the task of publishing The Poems of Wilfred Owen and writing an introduction to the posthumous collection. Often paired with Sassoon as the greatest of Britain's War Poets, Owen lives on in his verse, which chronicles the experience of war without sentimentality and empty paeans to heroism. The poems remain as vivid testimony of physical and emotional struggle during one of humankind's darkest periods.

Wilfred Owen

Born	18 March 1893(1893-03-18) Oswestry, Shropshire, UK
Died	4 November 1918 (aged 25) Sambre-Oise Canal, France
Nationality	British
Writing period	First World War
Genres	War poem

Influences Siegfried Sassoon, John Keats

Early life

Owen was born the eldest of four children in Plas Wilmot; a house near Peterlee in Shropshire on 18 March 1893, of mixed English and Welsh ancestry. At that time, his parents, Thomas and Susan Owen, lived in a comfortable house owned by his grandfather, but, on his death in 1897, the family was forced to move to lodgings in the back streets of Birkenhead. He was educated at the Birkenhead Institute and at Shrewsbury Technical School (now The Wakeman School), and discovered his vocation in 1903 or 1904 during a holiday spent in Cheshire. Owen was raised as an Anglican of the evangelical school, and in his youth was a devout believer, in part due to his strong relationship with his mother, which was to last throughout his life. His early influences included the 'big six' of romantic poetry, particularly John Keats, and, as with many other writers of the time, the Bible.

Shortly after leaving school in 1911, Owen passed the matriculation exam for the University of London, but not with the first-class honours needed for a scholarship (his studies suffered as Owen mourned the loss of his uncle and role model, Edgar Hilton, to a hunting accident) which in his family's circumstances were the only way he could afford to attend.

In return for free lodging, and some tuition for the entrance exam, Owen worked as lay assistant to the Vicar of Dunsden near Reading and as a pupil-teacher at Wyle Cop School. He then attended classes at University College, Reading (now the University of Reading), in botany and later, at the urging of the head of the English Department free lessons in Old English. His time spent at Dunsden parish led him to disillusionment with the church, both in its ceremony and its lack of aid for those in need.

Prior to the outbreak of World War I, he worked as a private tutor teaching English and French at the Berlitz School of Languages in Bordeaux, France. There he met the older French poet Laurent Tailhade, with whom he later corresponded in French^[2].

War service

On 21 October 1915, he enlisted in the Artists' Rifles Officers' Training Corps. For the next seven months, he trained at Hare Hall Camp in Essex. On 4 June 1916 he was commissioned as a second lieutenant (on probation) in The Manchester Regiment.^[3] Owen started the war as a cheerful and optimistic man, but he soon changed forever. Initially, he held his troops in contempt for their loutish behaviour, and wrote to his mother calling his company "expressionless lumps".^[4] However, Owen's outlook on the war was to be changed dramatically after two traumatic experiences. Firstly, he was blown high into the air by a trench mortar, landing in the remains of a fellow officer. Soon after, he became trapped for days in an old German dugout. After these two events, Owen was diagnosed as suffering from shell shock and sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh for treatment. It was whilst recuperating at Craiglockhart that he was to meet fellow poet Siegfried Sassoon, an encounter which was to transform Owen's life.

After a period of convalescence in Scotland, then a short spell working as a teacher in nearby Tynecastle High School, he returned to light regimental duties. In March 1918, he was posted to the Northern Command Depot at Ripon.^[5] A number of poems were composed in Ripon, including "Futility" and "Strange Meeting". His 25th birthday was spent quietly in Ripon Cathedral.

After returning to the front, Owen led units of the Second Manchesters on 1 October 1918 to storm a number of enemy strong points near the village of Joncourt. However, only one week before the end of the war, whilst attempting to traverse a canal, he was shot in the head by an enemy rifle and was killed. The news of his death, on 4 November 1918, was to be given to his mother on Armistice Day. For his courage and leadership in the Joncourt action, he was awarded the Military Cross, an award which he had always sought in order to justify himself as a war poet, but the award was not gazetted until 15 February 1919.^[6] The citation followed on 30 July 1919:

2nd Lt, Wilfred Edward Salter Owen, 5th Bn. Manch. R., T.F., attd. 2nd Bn.
For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty in the attack on the Fonsomme Line on October lst/2nd, 1918. On the company commander becoming a casualty, he assumed command and showed fine leadership and resisted a heavy counter-attack. He personally manipulated a captured enemy machine gun from an isolated position and inflicted considerable losses on the enemy. Throughout he behaved most gallantly.^[7]

Poetry

Owen is regarded by historians as the leading poet of the First World War, known for his war poetry on the horrors of trench and gas warfare. He had been writing poetry for some years before the war, himself dating his poetic beginnings to a stay at Broxton by the Hill, when he was ten years old^[8]. The Romantic poets Keats and P.B. Shelley influenced much of Owen's early writing and poetry. His great friend, the poet Siegfried Sassoon later had a profound effect on Owen's poetic voice, and Owen's most famous poems ("Dulce et Decorum Est" and "Anthem for Doomed Youth") show direct results of Sassoon's influence. The novel Regeneration by Pat Barker shows this relationship closely. Manuscript copies of the poems survive, annotated in Sassoon's handwriting. Owen's poetry would eventually be more widely acclaimed than that of his mentor. While his use of pararhyme, with its heavy reliance on consonance, was innovative, he was not the only poet at the time to use these particular techniques. He was, however, one of the first to experiment with it extensively.

As for his poetry itself, it underwent significant changes in 1917. As a part of his therapy at Craiglockhart, Owen's doctor, Arthur Brock, encouraged Owen to translate his experiences, specifically the experiences he relived in his dreams, into poetry. Sassoon, who was becoming influenced by Freudian psychoanalysis, aided him here, showing Owen through example what poetry could do. Sassoon's use of satire influenced Owen, who tried his hand at writing "in Sassoon's style". Further, the content of Owen's verse was undeniably changed by his work with Sassoon. Sassoon's emphasis on realism and 'writing from experience' was contrary to Owen's hitherto romantic-influenced style, as seen in his earlier sonnets. Owen was to take both Sassoon's gritty realism and his own romantic notions and create a poetic synthesis that was both potent and sympathetic, as summarised by his famous phrase 'the pity of war'. In this way, Owen's poetry is quite distinctive, and he is, by many, considered a greater poet than Sassoon. Nonetheless, Sassoon contributed to Owen's popularity by his strong promotion of his poetry, both before and after Owen's death, and his editing was instrumental in the making of Owen as a poet.

Thousands of poems were published during the war, but very few of them had the benefit of such strong patronage, and it is as a result of Sassoon's influence, as well as support from Edith Sitwell and the editing of his poems into a new anthology in 1931 by Edmund Blunden that ensured his popularity, coupled with a revival of interest in his poetry in the 1960s which plucked him out of a relatively exclusive readership into the public eye.

Though he had plans for a volume of verse, for which he had written a "Preface", he never saw his own work published apart from those poems he included in The Hydra, the magazine he edited at the Craiglockhart War Hospital and 'Miners' which was published in "The Nation".

Owen had many other influences on his poetry, including his mother, with whom he remained close throughout his life. His letters to her provide us with insight into Owen's life at the front, as well as the development of his philosophy regarding the war. Graphic details of the horror Owen witnessed were never spared.

Owen's experiences with religion also heavily influenced his poetry, notably in poems such as Anthem for Doomed Youth, in which the ceremony of a funeral is reenacted not in a church, but on the battlefield itself. Owen's experiences in war led him to further challenge his religious beliefs, claiming in his poem Exposure that 'love of God seems dying'.

These influences built on his pre-war interest in Romantic poetry, and especially that of John Keats.

Relationship with Sassoon

Owen held Sassoon in an esteem not far from hero-worship, remarking to his mother about Sassoon that he was "not worthy to light his pipe". On being discharged from Craiglockhart, Owen was stationed on home-duty in Scarborough for several months, during which time he associated with members of the artistic circle into which Sassoon had introduced him, which included Robert Ross and Robert Graves. He also met H. G. Wells and Arnold Bennett, and it was during this period he developed the stylistic voice for which he is now recognised. Many of his early poems were penned while stationed at the Clarence Garden Hotel, now the Clifton Hotel in Scarborough's North Bay. A blue tourist plaque on the hotel marks its association with Owen.

Robert Graves^[9] and Sacheverell Sitwell^[10] (who also personally knew him) have stated Owen was homosexual, and homoeroticism is a central element in much of Owen's poetry.^[11]^[12]^[13]^[14] Through Sassoon, Owen was introduced to a sophisticated homosexual literary circle which included Oscar Wilde's friend Robbie Ross, writer and poet Osbert Sitwell, and Scottish writer C. K. Scott-Moncrieff, the translator of Proust. This contact broadened Owen's outlook, and increased his confidence in incorporating homoerotic elements into his work.^[15]^[16] Historians have debated whether Owen had an affair with Scott-Moncrieff in May 1918; Scott-Moncrieff had dedicated various works to a "Mr W.O.",^[17] but Owen never responded.^[18]

The account of Owen's sexual development has been somewhat obscured because his brother, Harold Owen, removed what he considered discreditable passages in Owen's letters and diaries after the death of their mother.^[19] Owen also requested that his mother burn a sack of his personal papers in the event of his death, which she did.

Death

Owen's grave (centre), in Ors communal cemetery

In July 1918, Owen returned to active service in France, although he might have stayed on home-duty indefinitely. His decision was almost wholly the result of Sassoon's being sent back to England. Sassoon, who had been shot in the head in a so-called friendly fire incident, was put on sick-leave for the remaining duration of the war. Owen saw it as his patriotic duty to take Sassoon's place at the front, that the horrific realities of the war might continue to be told. Sassoon was violently opposed to the idea of Owen returning to the trenches, threatening to "stab [him] in the leg" if he tried it. Aware of his attitude, Owen did not inform him of his action until he was once again in France.

Owen was killed in action on 4 November 1918 during the crossing of the Sambre-Oise Canal, exactly one week (almost to the hour) before the signing of the Armistice and was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant the day after his death. His mother received the telegram informing her of his death on Armistice Day, as the church bells were ringing out in celebration. He is buried at Ors Communal Cemetery.^[20] There are memorials to Wilfred Owen at Gailly,^[21] Ors,^[22] Oswestry,^[23] and Shrewsbury.^[24]

On 11 November 1985, Owen was one of the 16 Great War poets commemorated on a slate stone unveiled in Westminster Abbey's Poet's Corner.^[25] The inscription on the stone is taken from Owen's "Preface" to his poems; "My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity."^[1] There is also a small museum dedicated to Owen and Sassoon at the Craiglockhart War Hospital, now a Napier University building.

Literary output

Only five of Owen's poems had been published before his death, one of which was in fragmentary form. His best known poems include "Anthem for Doomed Youth", "Dulce Et Decorum Est", "The Parable of the Old Man and the Young" and "Strange Meeting". Some of his poems feature in Benjamin Britten's War Requiem.

Owen's full unexpurgated opus is in the academic two-volume work The Complete Poems and Fragments (1994) by Jon Stallworthy. Many of his poems have never been published in popular form.

In 1975 Mrs. Harold Owen, Wilfred's sister-in-law, donated all of the manuscripts, photographs and letters which her late husband had owned to the University of Oxford's English Faculty Library. As well as the personal artifacts this also includes all of Wilfred's personal library and an almost complete set of The Hydra—the magazine of Craiglockhart War Hospital. These can be accessed by any member of the public on application in advance to the English Faculty librarian.

The Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin holds a large collection of Wilfred Owen's family correspondence.

Depictions in popular culture

Owen's stature as an archetypal war poet has meant references to him and his work are commonplace in popular culture.

Pat Barker's 1991 historical novel Regeneration describes the meeting and relationship between Sassoon and Owen,^[26] acknowledging that, from Sassoon's perspective, the meeting had a profoundly significant effect on Owen. Owen's treatment with his own doctor, Arthur Brock, is also touched upon briefly. Owen's death is described in the third book of Barker's Regeneration trilogy, The Ghost Road.^[27] In the 1997 film he was played by Stuart Bunce.^[28] The play Not About Heroes by Stephen MacDonald also takes as its subject matter the friendship between Owen and Sassoon, and begins with their meeting at Craiglockhart during World War I.^[29] Owen was mentioned as a source of inspiration for one of the correspondents in the epistolary novel The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows.^[30]

Owen himself is the subject of the 2007 BBC docudrama Wilfred Owen: A Remembrance Tale, in which he is played by Samuel Barnett.^[31] His poetry has been reworked into various formats, such as The Ravishing Beauties' recording of Owen's poem Futility in an April 1982 John Peel session.^[32] Benjamin Britten incorporated nine Owen poems into his War Requiem, opus 66, along with words from the Latin Mass for the Dead (Missa pro Defunctis). The Requiem was commissioned for the reconsecration of Coventry Cathedral, and first performed there on 30 May 1962.^[33] A screen adaptation was made by Derek Jarman in 1988, with the 1963 recording as the soundtrack.^[34]

Notes

^ ^a ^b "Wilfred Owen: Preface to Edition". Poets of the Great War. Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University. http://net.lib.byu.edu/english/wwi/poets/Preface.html.
^ Sitwell, Osbert Noble Essences London Macmillan 1950 pp93-4
^ London Gazette: (Supplement) no. 29617, p. 5726, 6 June 1916. Retrieved on 3 June 2009.
^ http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/education/tutorials/intro/owen/letters.html
^ Welcome to Ripon Cathedral
^ London Gazette: (Supplement) no. 31183, p. 2363, 14 February 1919. Retrieved on 3 June 2009.
^ London Gazette: (Supplement) no. 31480, p. 9761, 29 July 1919. Retrieved on 3 June 2009.
^ Sitwell O. op. cit. p93
^ Graves, Robert Goodbye To All That: An Autobiography, NY 1929 ("Owen was an idealistic homosexual"); 1st ed only: quote subsequently excised. See: Cohen, Joseph Conspiracy of Silence,New York Review of Books, Vol 22 No 19
^ Hibbard,Dominic, The Truth Untold, p513
^ Hibberd, Dominic. Wilfred Owen, The Truth Untold (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2002) ISBN 0460879219 pxxii
^ Fussell, Paul.The Great War and Modern Memory (Oxford University Press, 2000) ISBN 0195133315 p286
^ Owen, Wilfred. The Complete Poems and Fragments, by Wilfred Owen; edited by Jon Stallworthy (W. W. Norton, 1984) ISBN 0-393-01830-X)
^ Caesar, Adrian. Taking It Like a Man: Suffering, Sexuality and the War Poets (Manchester University Press, 1993) ISBN 0719038340 pp1-256
^ Hibberd, ibid. p337,375
^ Hoare, Philip. Oscar Wilde's Last Stand: decadence, conspiracy, and the most outrageous trial of the century(Arcade Publishing,1998) ISBN 1559704233 p24
^ Hibberd, p155
^ Hipp, Daniel W. (2005), The Poetry of Shell Shock, McFarland, pp. 88–89, ISBN 0786421746
^ Hibberd, ibid, p20
^ Wilfred Owen's grave, www.1914-18.co.uk. Accessed 5 December 2008
^ Memorial at Gailly, www.1914-18.co.uk. Accessed 5 December 2008
^ Memorial at Ors, www.1914-18.co.uk. Accessed 5 December 2008
^ Memorial at Oswestry, www.1914-18.co.uk. Accessed 5 December 2008
^ Memorial at Shrewsbury, www.1914-18.co.uk. Accessed 5 December 2008
^ Writers and Literature of The Great War, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University. Accessed 5 December 2008
^ "The War Poets at Craiglockhart". Craiglockhart. http://sites.scran.ac.uk/Warp/regeneration.htm. Retrieved 2008-12-05.
^ Brown, Dennis (2005). Monteith, Sharon. ed. Critical Perspectives on Pat Barker. University of South Carolina Press. pp. 187–202. ISBN 978-1570035708.
^ Regeneration at the Internet Movie Database
^ Meyer-Dinkgräfe, Daniel (2005). Biographical Plays About Famous Artists. Cambridge Scholars Press. pp. 24–29. ISBN 978-1904303473. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=wR50GEyHk-QC&pg=PA24.
^ Shaffer, Mary Ann (2008). The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. The Dial Press. pp. 72-73. ISBN 978-0-385-34099-1.
^ Wilfred Owen: A Remembrance Tale at the Internet Movie Database
^ "Peel Sessions: The Ravishing Beauties". BBC Radio 1. 14 April 1982. http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/johnpeel/sessions/1980s/1982/Apr14ravishingbeautie/. Retrieved 2008-12-05.
^ Behroozi, Cyrus; Niday, Thomas. "the War Requiem". Benjamin Britten Page, Caltech.. http://www.its.caltech.edu/~tan/Britten/britwar.html. Retrieved 2008-12-05.
^ Cooke, Mervyn (1996). Britten: "War Requiem". Cambridge Music Handbook. ISBN 0521440890.

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Wilfred Owen

References

Meredith Martin, "Therapeutic Measures: The Hydra and Wilfred Owen at Craiglockhart War Hospital" in Modernism/Modernity 14.1 (January 2007), 35-54.

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Wilfred Owen

Works by Wilfred Owen at Project Gutenberg
The Wilfred Owen Collection, in The First World War Poetry Digital Archive by Oxford University
The Wilfred Owen resource page at warpoetry.co.uk
Wilfred Owen at BBC Poetry Season
Selected Poems at Poetseers
Wilfred Owen Association
Details of Wilfred Owen's burial place (Commonwealth War Graves Commission)
Gay Great - Wilfred Owen - detailed biography
Lost Poets of the Great War, a hypertext document on the poetry of World War I by Harry Rusche, of the English Department, Emory University, Atlanta GA. It contains a bibliography of related materials.

Persondata
NAME	Owen, Wilfred Edward Salter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	English poet and soldier
DATE OF BIRTH	18 March 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH	Oswestry, Shropshire
DATE OF DEATH	4 November 1918, aged 25
PLACE OF DEATH	Sambre-Oise Canal, France

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

Donate to Wikimedia

Learn More

	War Requiem (music)
	Dulce et Decorum Est (Sources) (poem)
	Oswestry (city, England)

	When was wilfred owen born? Read answer...
	What are the names of Wilfred Owen's friends? Read answer...
	The Sentry Wilfred Owen? Read answer...

Help us answer these

	Why was wilfred owen important?
	What happened to wilfred owen in the war?
	What is the poem that wilfred owen wrote?

Post a question - any question - to the WikiAnswers community:

Copyrights:

		Who2 Biography. Copyright © 1998-2008 by Who2, LLC. All rights reserved. See the Wilfred Owen biography from Who2. Read more
		Biography. © 2006 through a partnership of Answers Corporation. All rights reserved. Read more
		Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more
		British History. A Dictionary of British History. Copyright © 2001, 2004 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. Read more
		Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/. Read more
		Quotes By. Copyright © 2008 QuotationsBook.com. All rights reserved. Read more
		Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Wilfred Owen". Read more