Georgian poet. Born at Rugby. Educated at Rugby School and King's
College, Cambridge. He was an atheist and active Socialist.
He was a friend of Edward Marsh and worked with him to prepare
and promote the first Georgian Anthology of poetry.
After travelling in Germany, and, following his nervous breakdown
he went on a long tour to recuperate, taking in the USA, Canada,
Honolulu, Samoa, Fiji, New Zealand, and Tahiti.
After hesitation about what course of action to take at the start
of the First World War he joined the navy. He was a witness at the
siege of Antwerp before writing his famous set of five sonnets
called 1914. Though he had seen the devastation and suffering
created by the war he kept it all at an emotional distance from
himself, denying the realities of war.
He had a deeply confused personality - given to both ecstatic
enthusiasm and suicidal doubt.
Following a mosquito bite he died of acute blood poisoning on
board ship on his way to Gallipoli, and was buried on the Greek
Island of Skyros.
Minds at War and Out in the Dark contain all five of Brooke's
1914 war sonnets, plus his sombre and realistic last poem, Soon to
Die.
Minds at War contains a further thirteen
and a half pages of discussion of Brooke's ideas, and extracts from
his letters which reveal something of the way his mind worked, and
the origins of some of the ideas in his sonnets.
There are five pages of information about
Brooke, and extracts from his letters in Out in the Dark.
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Born in London. Well known as an author of children's stories.
She was a close personal friend of Helen and Edward Thomas in the
last few years of his life. She loved Edward, but knew that
expressing her feelings to him would mean the immediate end of their
friendship. They often visited each other and went on long country
walks together. She typed his poems for him and submitted them, on
his behalf, under the pseudonym of Edward Eastaway, to various
publications.
Helen was aware of Eleanor's feelings towards Edward and was
perfectly content with the situation, believing that it might help
to make Edward a little happier.
There are two of her poems in Minds at War
and one in Out in the Dark. The poem that is common to both books is
"Now that you, too" which is a moving poem about saying goodbye to
Edward Thomas for the last time.
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Educated at Eton, and Balliol College, Oxford. He joined the army
in 1910. He seemed to take a psychopathic joy in killing people. His
poem Into Battle is said to be the most anthologised poem of the
First World War.
He died of wounds on 30th April, 1915, a few days after sending
his poem to The Times.
Into Battle appears in both Minds at War
and Out in the Dark.
Born in Gloucester. Educated at King's School Gloucester and the
Royal College of Music. He wrote poetry and music from before the
war.
He volunteered to fight and was initially turned down because of
his poor eyesight. He was gassed and wounded and returned to
Britain.
Mental illness developed. He was diagnosed as a paranoid
schizophrenic in 1922. He was committed to mental hospital where he
continued to write poetry and compose - sometimes believing that he
was still taking part in the war. He died of tuberculosis.
Three of his poems appear in Minds at War
and two in Out in the Dark.
Born in Bombay. As a small child he was sent to England (Southsea)
to be educated. He was desperately miserable for some years. He was
principally educated at the United Services College, Westward Ho!
Before the war he favoured re-armament. He was vigorous in his
opposition to Germany. After his only son was killed in the Battle
of the Loos,in September 1915, Kipling's confident and simple verse
faltered briefly.
He is best known for his classic children's books - especially
the Jungle Books (1894, 1895). He was awarded the Nobel Prize for
Literature in 1907.
During the First World War he was Director of Propaganda to the
British Colonies.
In Minds at War there are six of his war
poems, plus an extract from A Song of the English. In Out in the
Dark there are four full poems and two extracts.
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HENRY NEWBOLT, SIR, 1862-1924.
Born in Bilston, Staffordshire. Educated at Clifton College,
Bristol and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Barrister, then
professional poet.
Keenly interested in naval matters he wrote the official British
naval history of the war. Best selling imperialist poet.
Establishment literary figure.
There are seven examples of his fighting
verse in Minds at War and five in Out in the Dark.
Born Oswestry, Shropshire. Educated at Birkenhead Institute and
Shrewsbury Technical College.
From the age of nineteen Owen wanted to be a poet and immersed
himself in poetry, being especially impressed by Keats and Shelley.
He wrote almost no poetry of importance until he saw action in
France in 1917.
He was deeply attached to his mother to whom most of his 664
letters are addressed. (She saved every one.) He was a committed
Christian and became lay assistant to the vicar of Dunsden near
Reading 1911-1913 - teaching Bible classes and leading prayer
meetings - as well as visiting parishioners and helping in other
ways.
From 1913 to 1915 he worked as a language tutor in France.
He felt pressured by the propaganda to become a soldier and
volunteered on 21st October 1915. He spent the last day of 1916 in a
tent in France joining the Second Manchesters. He was full of boyish
high spirits at being a soldier.
Within a week he had been transported to the front line in a
cattle wagon and was "sleeping" 70 or 80 yards from a heavy gun
which fired every minute or so. He was soon wading miles along
trenches two feet deep in water. Within a few days he was
experiencing gas attacks and was horrified by the stench of the
rotting dead; his sentry was blinded, his company then slept out in
deep snow and intense frost till the end of January. That month was
a profound shock for him: he now understood the meaning of war. "The
people of England needn't hope. They must agitate," he wrote home.
(See his poems The Sentry and Exposure.)
He escaped bullets until the last week of the war, but 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 parents home as the Armistice
bells were ringing on 11 November.
Owen is widely accepted as the greatest writer of war poetry in
the English language.
There are 27 of his war poems in Minds at
War and 19 in Out in the Dark. Both anthologies contain additional
information, comment, and extracts from his letters.
More about Wilfred Owen, including
pictures.
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Educated at Shrewsbury and Clare College, Cambridge. Professor of
Literature at Newcastle (1890). Editor of Punch (1906-1932).
He was encouraged to write for the war effort by the Government's
Secret Bureau for Propaganda. His verse is a clear, competent call
to support official Government policy.
Four of his poems are included in Minds at
War.
Born in Kent. Educated at Marlborough, and Clare College,
Cambridge. He was a keen sportsman, loving cricket and foxhunting.
He was the first war poet to volunteer - 3 August 1914.
Disillusion set in slowly. His first critical poem, In the Pink, was
written in February 1916. He was the only English disillusioned
First World War poet who made an effort to be politically effective.
As a captain in the Royal Welch Fusiliers he met and became a
friend of Robert Graves. He became wildly angry at the death of one
of his friends and fought recklessly, winning the Military Cross. He
was wounded in the shoulder and later was shot in the head
accidentally by one of his own men. The wound was a graze, but
serious enough to put him out of the action for good from July 1918.
It was when convalescing from his shoulder wound in the summer of
1917 that he made his famous protest about the war. As a result of
this he was sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh. There
he met and encouraged Wilfred Owen with his poetry.
He began to feel guilty about not fighting alongside his old
comrades and returned to active service in November 1917.
After the war he became literary editor of the Herald, returned
to his country pursuits and wrote a number of autobiographical
books. He married and had one son. He became a Roman Catholic in
1957.
Second only to Owen as a war poet, he recorded the war and his
developing responses with uncompromising honesty.
Thirty three of his war poems are to be
found in Minds at War, twenty-seven in Out in the Dark.
There are seven pages of additional
information and extracts from his diaries in Out in the Dark.
In Minds at War there are twelve additional
pages about Sassoon, including Arnold Bennet's response to Sassoon's
defiance of military authority.
Both anthologies include Sassoon's famous
statement, In Defiance of Military Authority.
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He was born in London and educated at St Paul's School, and
Lincoln College, Oxford.
His first book was published when he was eighteen and in the next
eighteen years he wrote over 30 books and thousands of articles and
reviews. In spite of his output he was treated meanly by publishers
and was often troubled by a shortage of money.
He was a friend of Gordon Bottomley, Walter de la Mare, Lascelles
Abercrombie, Harold Monro, Eleanor Farjeon, the Meynells and friend
and spokesman for the American poet, Robert Frost.
It was Frost who encouraged Thomas to write poetry. Starting in
December 1914 and finishing in December 1916 Thomas wrote 144 poems
- mainly about the English countryside, weather, the seasons - all
of them written in England, in a straight, unadorned style - a
number of them darkly influenced by the war.
His poetry was rejected as fast as it was submitted to newspapers
and periodicals, using his pseudonym, Edward Eastaway.
He was a shy, self -effacing man who suffered from depression and
came close to suicide. Having volunteered for the front, after
eighteen months training, he went to France with the Royal Garrison
Artillery at the end of January 1917. He was killed ten weeks later,
on 9th April, leaving a wife and three children.
The gentleness, subtle melancholy, plainness and direct honesty
of Thomas's verse is both moving and impressive.
There are ten of his poems in Minds at War and thirteen in Out in
the Dark.
