Wilfred Owen

by Jon Stallworthy

Of all the poets of the First World War, Wilfred Owen most fires the imagination today – this is the comprehensive literary biography of the greatest WW1 poetWilfred Owen tragically died in battle just a few days before the Armistice. Now, during the centenary year of his death, this biography honours Owen’s brief yet remarkable life, and the enduring legacy he left. Stallworthy covers his life from the childhood spent in the backstreets of Shrewsbury to the appalling final months in the trenches. More than a simple account of his life, it is also a poet's enquiry into the workings of a poet's mind. This revised edition contains the beautiful illustrations of the original edition, including the drawings by Owen and facsimile manuscripts of his greatest poems, as well as a new preface by the author.‘One of the finest biographies of our time.’ Graham Greene‘An outstanding book, a worthy memorial to its subject.’ Kingsley Amis ‘As lovingly detailed as the records of Owen's short life permit, but it is always fascinatingly readable, in fact engrossing.’ Sunday Telegraph

Genres: Biography, Poetry, Nonfiction, History, Biography Memoir, World War I, War

386 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 14, 2013

About the author

Jon (Howie) Stallworthy (18 January 1935 – 19 November 2014) FBA FRSL was Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Oxford. He was also a Fellow (and was twice Acting President) of Wolfson College, a poet, and a literary critic. From 1977 to 1986, he was the John Wendell Anderson Professor of English at Cornell.

Stallworthy was born in London. His parents, Sir John Stallworthy and Margaret Stallworthy, were from New Zealand and moved to England in 1934. Stallworthy started writing poems when he was only seven years old. He was educated at the Dragon School, Rugby School and at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he won the Newdigate prize. 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.

While researching the local history of New Zealand Stallworthy discovered an obscure volume entitled Early Northern Wairoa written by his great-grandfather, John Stallworthy (1854–1923), in 1916. From this book he learned that his great-great-grandfather, George Stallworthy (1809–1859), had left his birthplace of Preston Bissett in Buckinghamshire, England, for the Marquesas as a missionary. This discovery led in turn to him finding family-related letters in the archives of the London Missionary Society. Stallworthy's book A Familiar Tree (Oxford University Press, 1978) is a collection of poetry inspired by events depicted in these documents. Singing School is an autobiography which emphasises Stallworthy's development as a poet.

Stallworthy wrote a short summary of war poetry in the introductory chapter to the Oxford Book of War Poetry (Edited by Jon Stallworthy, Oxford University Press, 1984), as well as editing several anthologies of war poetry and writing a biography of Wilfred Owen. In 2010 he received the Wilfred Owen Poetry Award from the Wilfred Owen Association. In the course of his literary career, he became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the British Academy.

Reviews

[Boadicea · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best soldier English poets of the 1st World War, this is his most recognised poem.

Dulce et Decorum Est 

BY WILFRED OWEN

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.


Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—

Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.


In all my dreams before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.


If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.


Notes:sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.”

N/a

Source: Poems (Viking Press, 1921)

This is a superb biography which really gets under the skin of its subject and elicits the raison d'etre behind his work. I have long enjoyed his haunting rendition of the tyranny of war in poetry despite not being a particular enthusiast for the genre.

My only contact with his work previous was discovering in my impoverished youth a dog-eared 1st edition of his poems in a fusty bookshop in the North East of England which was priced at £25, which was the princely sum that I had to live on that week. Sadly I returned the book to the shelf; I see that the antiquarian bibliophiles have ensured that it now retails for US$7000! His work however endures and ages well.

This is my personal favourite:

Strange Meeting

BY WILFRED OWEN

It seemed that out of battle I escaped

Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped

Through granites which titanic wars had groined.


Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,

Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.

Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared

With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,

Lifting distressful hands, as if to bless.

And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall,— 

By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.


With a thousand fears that vision's face was grained;

Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,

And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.

“Strange friend,” I said, “here is no cause to mourn.” 

“None,” said that other, “save the undone years,

The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,

Was my life also; I went hunting wild

After the wildest beauty in the world,

Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,

But mocks the steady running of the hour,

And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.

For by my glee might many men have laughed,

And of my weeping something had been left,

Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,

The pity of war, the pity war distilled.

Now men will go content with what we spoiled.

Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.

They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress. 

None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.

Courage was mine, and I had mystery;

Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery: 

To miss the march of this retreating world

Into vain citadels that are not walled.

Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels, 

I would go up and wash them from sweet wells,

Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.

I would have poured my spirit without stint

But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.

Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.


“I am the enemy you killed, my friend.

I knew you in this dark: for so you frowned

Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.

I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.

Let us sleep now. . . .”


Notes:
Poetry Out Loud Participants: changes to punctuation, stanza breaks, and a few words were made in May 2014.

Source: The Poems of Wilfred Owen, edited by Jon Stallworthy (W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1986)

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating but so sad - I need to go and see the exhibition at the old Craiglockhart War Hospital where Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon met now.
https://www.napier.ac.uk/about-us/our...

Much enriched by the author having spent time with Wilfred Owen's younger brother Harold which results in a lot of childhood stories that really make the story personal and engaging. My only criticism is that some of the poems were only shown as photos of the originals which made them hard to read.

Really brings home what a futile waste of life the First World War was.

[Lorna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this biography several years ago and was profoundly moved and inspired by the growth of such a young man, from classically-educated school boy finding his own voice to the raw and brutally honest poet we are so familiar with now. When I finished this biography we were living near Birkenhead library. Owen's father had been the local station master and two of the family homes were nearby. I realised I could walk to both addresses from the library. One house is a simple Victorian terrace the other a larger semi. I was amazed there was nothing to indicate Owen had lived in either house considering his fame and reputation. By a beautiful coincidence, on returning to the library, I noticed a stack of leaflets by English Heritage asking for suggestions for properties worthy of blue plaques and of course I filled the form in straight away.

Several months later I received a letter saying my application had been approved and they had chosen the larger of the two houses for a blue plaque. I was invited to the unveiling ceremony. About thirty of us climbed aboard an old red double-decker bus (cheesy I know!) including Owen's surviving family members, a few people from English Heritage and Lloyd Grossman (even cheesier). No one introduced themselves to me. I was only twenty-four at the time. I am sure they thought I was a stowaway! It was so moving to watch the unveiling and to know he would be properly remembered. It made me glow inside to be a small part of preserving his legacy and very strange to be anonymous (until now!).
In conclusion, a very memorable book!

[Brian Robbins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent biography. Gave a good insight into the poems and into the author, but with none of the tedious reams of detail that sometimes goes with such an account. It was really well written and held my attention throughout. I loved the reliance on lengthy quotes from his letters and from his brother's rememberances of him. Also the facscimiles of many of his poems, and in some cases being able to see how the poesm grew through copies of a number of draft versions.

Every biography of an author should carry the appendix Stallworthy had in this - a list of all the books on Owen's own bookshelves. I can't resist looking through bookshelves wherever I visit, and this gave a new edge to this in looking through a favourite poet's bookshelves.

[Rachel Louise Atkin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I hate to say this but the earlier part of Wilfred's life is actually kind of dull. I don't know if it was Stallworthy's writing, or the fact that all he was basically doing was discovering his poetic identity. This is interesting, of course, but his childhood was of no real interest to me for some reason. I did, however, really like the parts about when he went to London and found the Poetry Bookshop. This was wonderful to read. I guess my enjoyment of this was based on the fact that for me Owen is most interesting when it comes to his own writing.
This biography really picked up for me during the last three chapters, detailing his time at Craiglockhart, Scarborough, Ripon, and eventually his death. It was at this point in his life where he met Sassoon - probably the most important meeting he had - and this was probably the most enjoyable. It was lovely to see Owen's transition from hero-worshipper so standing on his own two feet. The last two chapters completely broke me.
Overall, not the best biography I've read and only select parts were enjoyable. If you have interest in Owen as a person then read it, but if like me you are only there for the parts when Owen really starts to be concerned with the pity, you'd be best just reading the last three chapters.

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first biography of Wilfred Owen I have read. I knew the basic facts about him, particularly his death so close to the end of the war. Stallworthy's book was first published in 1974. This is a 2013 reprinting.

It is both a biography and a critical study, although the latter is a smaller part of the book, but because Owen was only 25 when he died it helps to understand him as both a poet and a person (if one can separate the two things.) It also comes with an article, "Forty Years Later" where Stallworthy looks at the developments in Owen's reputation since 1974. This is an interesting read. Owen's reputation has grown as time has past. Indeed, one of the things this book did teach me was that Yeats didn't like his poetry at all. It is possible that Yeats' decision to exclude Owen from his "Oxford Book of Modern Verse" and the controversy that followed helped make Owen more famous than he was before. Interestingly Stallworthy thinks that the real push was Brittain's "War Requiem", but that Owen's reputation had been growing for years.

He also takes some issue with Dominic Hibberd's "Wilfred Owen: A New Biography." Hibberd claims Owen was gay. Stallworthy points out that it isn't as clear cut as that and that 'gay' is a anachronistic term. Also, Hibberd suggests Owen was seduced by C K Scott Montcrieff (best known now for his translation of Proust's In Search of Lost Time.) Stallworthy pretty conclusively proves this is nonsense. I have few doubts that Owen was homosexual. I think though that on the basis of the society he lived in and his own religious background it was unlikely to be something he acted upon.

Stallworthy covers Owen's influences - particularly and most obviously Keats and Sassoon. The meeting of Sassoon and Owen at Craiglockhart has been the fuel for much writing (he also met Robert Graves there too.) And it certainly had a strong impact of Owen's belief in himself as a poet.

You wonder what he might have achieved had he lived.

The book relies heavily for its earlier chapters on Harold Owen's work about his brother, quoting large chunks of his memoirs and from Owen's letters. For me one of the best things in this book is its reliance on Owen's own words. It features replicas of Owen's drafts of his poems to and fragments that never made the step to proper poetry. But his voice is here throughout.

The best thing I can say about this book is that I finished it with a better understanding of Owen is improved. Stallworthy makes great claims for Owen and I agree with many of them but where I think Owen is most interesting is that he is one of the earliest of those poets whose function is to witness and give voice to events. I quote Anna Akhmatova's Requiem a lot: "Can you describe this? Yes."

And Owen could too.

[Phil · Rating 2 out of 5]

The problem with writing a biography of anyone who died as young as Wilfred Owen did is that the biography either ends up being very brief or else it contains far too much about the subject's childhood. Aided by the profuse recollections of Owen's younger brother Harold, Stallworthy chose the second option. Unfortunately, Wilfred's childhood was not only fairly boring, he was also a remarkably obnoxious child, bullying and hectoring his unfortunate siblings in a way that even the most ardent admiring of his poems would find hard to excuse.

The other weakness in the book is that, as Stallworthy admits, "we have no testimony but Harold Owen's to much of his brother's childhood and to many incidents in his later life." Stallworthy states that Harold is "an unusually faithful witness", but I'm not so convinced. Harold produces a detailed account of returning from a holiday in Ireland, including a description of the drunk coachman who drove their carriage...but he would have been well under a year old at the time. While a baby might retain a vague memory of a face or voice, I really can't believe that such a young child would recall so much detail, which makes me doubt the veracity of all his other recollections.

The book greatly improves in the last three chapters, partly because Wilfred himself starts to grow up and partly because Stallworthy is able to call on more sources when describing the last months of Owen's life.

[Henry Sturcke · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is undeniable poignancy in the life of a young man who died in action aged twenty-five, just one week before the Armistice. But what made me want to read this biography was to learn more about the poet whose words first struck me as Benjamin Britten set them in his War Requiem. This biography celebrates what Stallworthy calls “the disciplined sensuality, the passionate intelligence that distinguish Owen’s poetry at its best.” It also shows the challenge in publishing a full-length biography about such a short life. I grew impatient while reading the first chapters, which traced his ancestry and his unremarkable childhood. I could have also done with less background information on military matters, such as the German retrenchment to the Hindenburg line. This made the book seem padded.

Nevertheless, I appreciated the context Stallworthy offers for several poems and his explanation of Owen’s technical innovation, pararhyme. This helped my understanding and enjoyment (if one can say that about some of the most harrowing poems I’ve ever read).

I read the first edition, since it is what I owned, but the revised edition (2014) benefits from what Stallworthy learned in preparing the critical edition of Owen’s poems. It also considers the influence he had on poets who came after him, such as Auden, Spender, Hughes, and Heaney, as well as the rise in Owen’s reputation. 

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jon Stallworthy's biography of Wilfred Owen is quite detailed. Its subject was killed in action at the age of twenty-five, and thus it seems almost necessary to include much detail in order to derive a full-length book from that short life. Beyond the facts of biography, Stallworthy seeks to trace some of the specific experiences and readings that influenced individual poems that flowed from Owen's pen, making this a true critical biography.

So there's a lot of information packed into these pages, and yet somehow the book manages to deliver a rather dry portrait of a deeply passionate writer. The original edition of this biography came out in 1974, and that timing may have to do with the fact that Stallworthy steps rather delicately around the topic of Owen's homosexuality, which any discerning reader of the poetry will recognize immediately. That omission is problematic, since Stallworthy essentially neuters a key part of his subject's personality, leaving a significant hole right in the the middle of the larger portrait.

In the end, my favorite part of the book is Appendix C, "Wilfred Owen's Library", which lists out all books that he is known to have owned at the time of his death. I gleaned more substantive information from this simple bibliographical listing than I did from the main text.

[Katy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have read Owen's poems and been dazzled by them, but now I have read about the man himself I feel they shall stroke a deeper blow going forward. Stallworthy has managed to create a comprehensive account of who he was, and how others saw him, and I am so glad I read this book.

[Chiefdonkey Bradey · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful tender biography, yet each page took me to dark water

[Martha Sutcliffe · Rating 2 out of 5]

He dies :(