Siegfried Sassoon

by Jean Moorcroft Wilson

The definitive biography of one of the twentieth century's finest poets, Siegfried Sassoon combines material from The Making of a War Poet and The Journey from the Trenches, the two bestselling volumes on Sassoon from his biographer and foremost scholar, Jean Moorcroft Wilson. Encompassing the poet's complete life and works, from his patriotic youth that led him to the frontline, to the formation of his anti-war convictions, great literary friendships and flamboyant love affairs, this single-volume opus also includes new poems only just come to light. With over a decade's research, and unparalleled access to Sassoon's private correspondence, Wilson presents the complete portrait, both elegant and heartfelt, of an extraordinary man, and an extraordinary poet.

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

608 pages, Hardcover

First published October 24, 2013

About the author

Jean Moorcroft Wilson is a lecturer in English at Birkbeck, University of London.

Reviews

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful story of a gay soldier in WWI. I want to read more about Sassoon, but I don't want to read it by this author. Long, long passages dedicated to minute and mostly irrelevant details. Otherwise a very inspiring book.

[Deborah Pickstone · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent and interesting biography of a favourite poet and writer.

[Johns · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a large book printed in a small type font. Initially I didn't think of reading very much of it. But once I started, I got hooked and proceeded to consume most of the book. The author struck a good balance between informative biographical details and selected examples of Sassoon's wonderful poetry. Read the book! You'll learn much about this terrific English poet who wrote cogent verse sandwiched between heroic combat episodes in the trenches of WWI.

[Raymonds009 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very long with much background on this overlooked "war poet". His mark appears all throughout the literary world of the early 20th century.

[Chaimpesach · Rating 2 out of 5]

Maybe there wasn't enough gripping subject matter, I don't know - all I do know is that this book focused heavily on incredibly boring and useless details (e.g. the history of his primary school) without dealing with relevant details (e.g. his relationship with his brothers and mother following his childhood) while not spending nearly enough time on the actual interesting details (e.g. his relationship with Graves, Blunden, Owen, T.E. Lawrence, et al). The prose was adequate, and only that, and, quite frankly, I am impressed that such an interesting life could be made to be so boring. This book is long, full of irrelevant information, and very unlikely to cover areas of interest (e.g. Sassoon's politics, his identity as a typical Englishman juxtaposed with his identity as Jew, etc.).

In short, this book was not short, and it was not fun to read.

[Christine Parker · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't praise this book highly enough. An equable narration of a life so emotionally charged in many ways, thoroughly readable and informative. Having only previously read, though many times, Complete Memoirs ... Am now interested to read the poetry so temptingly introduced within the text.