The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry (32 page)

Charlotte Mew
was born in Bloomsbury, London, in 1869 and was educated at the Lucy Harrison School for Girls in Gower Street. Throughout her life she was beset with ill health, family deaths and poverty, but the award of a Civil List Pension of £75 per annum in 1923, on the recommendation of Thomas Hardy, John Masefield and Walter de la Mare (qq.v.), allowed her to write. In 1928 she committed suicide by drinking disinfectant while undergoing treatment for her neurasthenia.

‘The Cenotaph' appeared in
The Farmer's Bride
(2nd edn: London: Poetry Bookshop, 1921). ‘May, 1915' appeared in
The Rambling Sailor
(London: Poetry Bookshop, 1929).

Harold Monro
was born in Brussels, Belgium, in 1879 and was educated at Radley College and at Caius College, Cambridge. He founded the
Poetry Review
in 1912, was the publisher of the Georgian Poetry series, and opened and ran the Poetry Bookshop in London from 1913 until his death. He was unfit for service abroad, but was called up in June 1916 and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in an anti-aircraft battery in the Royal Garrison Artillery before transferring to the Intelligence
Department of the War Office in 1917. He died in 1932.

‘The Poets are Waiting', ‘Youth in Arms I', ‘Youth in Arms II: Soldier', ‘Youth in Arms III: Retreat' and ‘Youth in Arms IV: Carrion' appeared in
Children of Love
(London: Poetry Bookshop, 1914).

Sir Henry Newbolt
was born in Bilston, Staffordshire, in 1862, the son of a vicar. He was educated at Clifton College and at Corpus Christi, Oxford. He was a barrister for twelve years before dedicating himself to writing poetry and prose full-time. He was knighted in 1915, was made a Companion of Honour in 1922. He died in 1938.

‘The War Films' appeared in
St. George's Day and Other Poems
(London: John Murray, 1918).

Robert Nichols
was born in Shanklin on the Isle of Wight in 1893. He was educated at Winchester College and at Trinity College, Oxford, but left Oxford after a year. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant and served in the 104th Brigade of the Royal Field Artillery between October 1914 and August 1916, going to France in August 1915 but being invalided out a year later with shell shock. He subsequently worked for the ministries of Labour and Information. After the war he was Professor of English Literature at the University of Tokyo from 1921 until 1924. He died in 1944.

‘Eve of Assault: Infantry Going Down to Trenches' and ‘The Day's March' appeared in
Ardours and Endurances
(London: Chatto & Windus, 1917).

Wilfred Owen
was born in Oswestry in 1893, the eldest son of a railway official, and was educated at the Birkenhead Institute and at Shrewsbury Technical School. In 1911 he failed the London University Matriculation Examination and became an unpaid lay
assistant in an evangelical parish at Dunsden. After failing to win a scholarship to University College, Reading, he moved to France to become an English teacher. He returned to England in October 1915 and enlisted in the 28th (County of London) Battalion of the London Regiment (The Artists' Rifles), was commissioned as a second lieutenant, and was sent to join the 2nd Battalion of the Manchester Regiment in France at the end of the year. In June 1917 he was sent home on sick leave and was admitted to Craiglockhart Hospital, near Edinburgh. He was awarded the Military Cross shortly after his return to the Western Front in September 1918, and was killed on the Oise–Sambre canal on 4 November 1918.

‘Anthem for Doomed Youth', ‘Apologia pro Poemate Meo', ‘Arms and the Boy', ‘Disabled', ‘Dulce et Decorum est', ‘Exposure', ‘Futility', ‘Greater Love', ‘Mental Cases', ‘Smile, Smile, Smile', ‘Spring Offensive', ‘Strange Meeting' and ‘The Send-off' appeared in
Poems by Wilfred Owen, with an Introduction by Siegfried Sassoon
(London: Chatto & Windus, 1920).

Marjorie Pickthall
was born in Gunnersbury, near London, in 1883, but emigrated to Toronto in Canada in 1889. She was educated at Bishop Strachan School for Girls, and later worked in Victoria College Library at the University of Toronto. She returned to England in 1912 and lived in Bowerchalke, near Salisbury, and in London. Her wartime work included farming, training as an ambulance driver, and working in the South Kensington Meteorological Office Library. In 1920 she returned to Canada, where she died unexpectedly from an embolus in 1922. Her literary output included several hundred short stories, five novels, and several collections of poetry.

‘Marching Men' appeared in
The Wood Carver's Wife and Other Poems
(Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1922).

Jessie Pope
was born in Leicester in 1868 and was educated at Craven House, Leicester, and at North London Collegiate School. She wrote satirical fiction, verse, songs and articles for leading popular magazines and newspapers, including
Punch
, the
Daily Mail
and the
Daily Express
, and was also a writer of children's books and the first editor of Robert Tressell's socialist classic
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists
. She lived in Fritton, Norfolk, and died in 1941.

‘The Call' and ‘Socks' appeared in
Jessie Pope's War Poems
(London: Grant Richards, 1915). ‘The Beau Ideal' appeared in
More War Poems
(London: Grant Richards, 1915). ‘War Girls' appeared in
Simple Rhymes for Stirring Times
(London: C. Arthur Pearson, 1916).

Ezra Pound
was born in Idaho in 1885 and was educated at the University of Pennsylvania and at Hamilton College, New York. He came to Europe in 1908 and settled in London, becoming prominent in literary circles and founding the Imagist Movement in poetry with Richard Aldington (q.v.) and the American poet Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961). In 1920 he left England for Paris, and he subsequently settled at Rapallo, in Italy. During the Second World War he broadcast on Italian radio, and in 1945 he was charged with treason; being found unfit to plead, he was confined to a mental institution. He was released and returned to Italy in 1961. He died in 1972.

‘Poem' appeared in
Umbra: The Early Poems of Ezra Pound
(London: Elkin Matthews, 1920). ‘Hugh Selwyn Mauberley: V' appeared in
Hugh Selwyn Mauberley by E. P.
(London: Ovid Press, 1920).

Herbert Read
was born in Kirby Moreside, Yorkshire, in 1893, the son of a brewer, and was educated at Crossley's School, Halifax, and at Leeds University. He served with the 2nd, 7th
and 10th Battalions of the Yorkshire Regiment (The Green Howards) from 1915 until 1918. Initially a second lieutenant, he was made a captain in 1917 and went on to win the Military Cross and the Distinguished Service Order. Assistant keeper at the Victoria & Albert Museum between 1922 and 1931, he was also Professor of Fine Art at Edinburgh from 1931 until 1933 and editor of the
Burlington Magazine
from 1933 until 1939. He was knighted in 1953.
In Retreat
(London: L. & V. Woolf, 1925) and
Ambush
(London: Faber & Faber, 1930) are prose records of his war experiences. He died in 1968.

‘My Company' appeared in
Naked Warriors
(London: Art & Letters, 1919). ‘To a Conscript of 1940' appeared in
Thirty-Five Poems
(London: Faber & Faber, 1940).

[John] Edgell Rickword
was born in Colchester in 1898 and joined the 28th (County of London) Battalion of the London Regiment (The Artists' Rifles) straight from school in 1916. He transferred to the 5th Battalion of the Princess Charlotte of Wales's (Royal Berkshire Regiment), was commissioned as a second lieutenant in September 1917 and was awarded the Military Cross before being invalided out of the army after losing an eye. After studying at Pembroke College, Oxford, he spent much of the 1920s as a literary critic, editing the
Calendar of Modern Letters
between 1925 and 1927, but he devoted himself to political journalism after 1930, becoming associate editor of the
Left Review
in 1934 and editor of
Our Time
from 1944 until 1947. He died in 1982.

‘Moonrise over Battlefield', ‘The Soldier Addresses His Body', ‘Trench Poets', ‘War and Peace' and ‘Winter Warfare' appeared in
Behind the Eyes
(London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1921).

Isaac Rosenberg
was born in Bristol in 1890, the son of Jewish immigrants, but grew up in London. After being educated at the
Stepney Board School, he left at the age of fourteen to become an apprentice engraver. He attended art school in the evenings, and between 1911 and 1914 he studied at the Slade School of Art. Because of poor health, he travelled to South Africa in 1914, but returned in the following year. He originally enlisted in the 12th Battalion (Bantam) of the Suffolk Regiment (Bury St Edmunds) in October 1915, before transferring to the 12th Battalion of the South Lancashire (Prince of Wales's Volunteers) Regiment. He served on the Western Front with the 1st and 11th Battalions of the King's Own Royal Regiment (Lancaster), and was killed on 1 April 1918. His body was never recovered.

‘Break of Day in the Trenches', ‘Dead Man's Dump', ‘Girl to Soldier on Leave', ‘Louse Hunting', ‘On Receiving the First News of the War', ‘Returning, We Hear The Larks' and ‘Soldier: Twentieth Century' appeared in
Poems by Isaac Rosenberg
, ed. Gordon Bottomley with an introductory memoir by Laurence Binyon (London: William Heinemann, 1922).

Margaret Sackville
was born in 1881 at Bexhill, the daughter of the 7th Earl de la Warr, and was educated privately. A prolific poet and children's author, she joined the anti-war Union of Democratic Control in 1914 and supported it throughout the war. She lived for much of her life in Edinburgh, but died in Cheltenham in 1963.

‘A Memory' appeared in
The Pageant of War
(London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co., 1916).

H[enry] Smalley Sarson
. Nothing is known about Sarson, although when a selection of his poems was included in Galloway Kyle's
Soldier Poets: Songs of the Fighting Men
(London: Erskine Macdonald, 1916) he was described as ‘Private, Canadian Contingent'.

‘The Shell' appeared in
From Field and Hospital
(London: Erskine Macdonald, 1916).

Siegfried Sassoon
was born at Weirleigh in Kent in 1886. He was educated at Marlborough College and at Clare College, Cambridge, but left Cambridge without a degree. He enlisted as a trooper in the Sussex Yeomanry in August 1914, and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the 3rd Battalion of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers in May 1915. He served in France from November 1915 until August 1916, when he won the Military Cross, and again from February 1917 until April 1917, when he was invalided home with a bullet wound to his shoulder. His public protest against the continuance of the war in June led him to be sent to Craiglockhart Hospital near Edinburgh, but he returned to active service in November 1917 and served in Ireland, Palestine and France before being demobilized with the rank of captain in March 1919. He had a post-war career as a poet, novelist and memoir-writer, and wrote three semi-autobiographical works about the war:
Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man
(London: Faber & Gwyer, 1928),
Memoirs of an Infantry Officer
(London: Faber & Faber, 1930) and
Sherston's Progress
(London: Faber & Faber, 1936). He was awarded the CBE in 1951, and he died in 1967.

‘Blighters', ‘The Death-Bed', ‘The Kiss', ‘The Redeemer' and ‘They' appeared in
The Old Huntsman and Other Poems
(London: William Heinemann, 1917). ‘Banishment', ‘CounterAttack', ‘In Barracks', ‘Repression of War Experience' and ‘Sick Leave' appeared in
Counter-Attack and Other Poems
(London: William Heinemann, 1918). ‘Aftermath', ‘Ancient History', ‘Everyone Sang', ‘Memorial Tablet' and ‘Picture-Show' appeared in
Picture-Show
(New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1920). ‘On Passing the New Menin Gate' appeared in
The Heart's Journey
(London: William Heinemann, 1928).

Alan Seeger
was born in New York in 1888 and was educated at the Horace Mann School and at Harvard College. In 1912 he went to Paris to lead a bohemian life in the Latin Quarter. Three weeks after the outbreak of the war he enlisted in the French Foreign Legion, and he served on the Western Front until his death on the Somme on 4 July 1916.

‘I have a rendezvous with Death' appeared in
Poems by Alan Seeger
, with an introduction by William Archer (London: Constable & Co., 1917).

Edward Shanks
was born in London in 1892 and was educated at Merchant Taylors' School and at Trinity College, Cambridge. When war broke out he enlisted in the 28th (County of London) Battalion of the London Regiment (The Artists' Rifles), and in December 1914 he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the 8th Battalion of the South Lancashire (Prince of Wales's Volunteers) Regiment. He was invalided out in April of the following year and worked for the War Office for the remainder of the war. He was the first winner of the Hawthornden Prize for imaginative writing in 1919, and was later Lecturer in Poetry at Liverpool University. He was assistant editor of the
London Mercury
from 1919 until 1922 and chief leader writer of the London
Evening Standard
between 1928 and 1935. He died in 1953.

‘In Training' appeared in
Poems
(London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1916). ‘Armistice Day, 1921' appeared in
The Shadowgraph and Other Poems
(London: W. Collins Sons & Co., 1925).

Edward Shillito
was born in Wakefield in 1872. Educated at Owen's College, Manchester, and at Mansfield College, Oxford, he worked as a Free Church minister in Kent, Hampshire and London. He died in 1948.