Wilfred Owen: Early Life
Wilfred Owen was born at Plas Wilmot, Oswestry, on 18th March 1893. He had his early education at the Birkenhead Institute, Liverpool. Then he entered the University of London. In 1910 he matriculated at the London University. But that time he started writing verses.
Life & Works of Wilfred Owen: 1910-1920
In 1913 he fell seriously ill. To avoid the severe winter of Britain he went to stay in France. There he becomes a tutor at Bordeaux. The First World War broke out in 1914. Owen now joined the army and enlisted in the Artists’ rifles. He was directed in January 1917 to join the second battalion of the Manchester Regiment on the Somme battlefield. In May that year he had an ugly fall in a hole in the dark battlefield. He had a concussion of the brain and was sent to Craiglockhart War hospital near Edinburgh. After recovery he joined the force in September 1918. Two months later on 4th November he was killed by the firing of a German machine-gun. He was awarded the supreme honour of the Military Cross for his valour and services.
Poems of Wilfred Owen
As early as 1910 Owen began to write poems in the romantic tradition of Keats and Tennyson. He also came under the influence of French Poetry. His poems were collected and published posthumously in 1920 by Seigfried Sassoon. The poems of Wilfred Owen (1931) are a much more complete collection of his works and contains an excellent memoir by Edmund Blunden. Some of the important poems of Owens are Futility, Anthem for Doomed Youth, Strange Meeting Spring Offensive, Exposure and Insensibility.
