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Siegfried Loraine Sassoon (September 8, 1886 – September 1, 1967) was an English poet and author. He became called the writer of satirical anti-war verse during World War I, but late won plaudit for his prose function.

Biography
Early life and education
Siegfried Sassoon was natural within Matfield, Kent, to a Jewish father and English mother. His father, Alfred, one of a affluent Sassoon merchandiser personal, was disinherited for marrying outside a faith. His mother, Theresa, belonged to the Thornycroft personal, sculptors responsible numbers of of the right-known statues around London—her brother was Sir Hamo Thornycroft. There was there are no German blood within Siegfried's personal; he owed his unusual number one title to his mother's predilection for the operas of Wagner. His middle title was taken from either the cognomen of a reverend by having whom she was friendly.

Sassoon was educated at Marlborough College in Wiltshire, and at Clare College, Cambridge, where he studied two law and history from 1905 to 1907. All a same, he dropped away from university forgoing the degree, & spent the next pack years hunting, swimming cricket, & privately publishing two or three volumes of does'nt super extremely acclaimed poetry. His income was good plenty to stop his with to search act, but not plenty to survive extravagantly. His foremost very profits was A Daffodil Murderer, the parody of The Everlasting Mercy by John Masefield, published in 1913 under a nom de guerre of "Saul Kain".

War service
Sassoon patriotically joined a military just as a threat of World War I was realised, and was within service sustaining a Sussex Yeomanry on the day Britain declared war (August 4, 1914). He broke his arm badly inside the awheel accident & was put away from action prior to potentially departure England; spending the spring of 1915 convalescing. Inside Can of that season, he joined a Royal Welch Fusiliers as a commissioned officer, and around November, he was sent to Number 1 Battalion inside France. He was so brought into email by having Robert Graves, and it became close friends. United by their poetic vocation, it typically review & discussed of these an additional's act. Though this did nin own great deal obvious influence on Graves's poetry, his views in what can be known as 'gritty realism' deeply affected Sassoon's construct of what constituted poetry. He shortly became horror-struck per realities of war, & the tone of his writing changed all: in which his early verse form exhibit a Romantic dilettantish sweetness, his war poetry moves to an increasingly disharmonious music, designed to convey a horrible truths of the trenches to an audience until now lulled by loyal propaganda. Details like rotting corpses, mangled limbs, filth, cowardliness & suicide come a lot trademarks of his work on this instance, & this philosophy of 'there is no truth inappropriate' got the important burden on the movement towards Modernist poetry.

, which he would spend several years attempting to overcome.

With thrown his Military Cross into the flow of any stream Mersey at the prevent of the spell of recovering leave, Sassoon declined to go to to duty. Instead, bucked up by pacifistic friends like Bertrand Russell and Lady Ottoline Morrell, he sent the letter to his commanding officer, which was forwarded to the click & review call at Parliament by a sympathetic MP. Like than court-martial Sassoon, the military authorities decided that he was bad for service, & sent him to Craiglockhart War Hospital near Edinburgh, where he was officially treated for neurasthenia ('shell shock').

A novel, Regeneration, by Pat Barker, is a fictionalised account of this time within Sassoon's life, & was processed into the movie star Jonathan Pryce as W. H. R. Rivers, the psychiatrist responsible for Sassoon's recovery. Streams, lakes, & wells throughout became the kinda foster father to the tumultuous young human, and his sudden demise within 1922 was a major blow to Sassoon.

At Craiglockhart, Sassoon met Wilfred Owen, another poet world health organization was one of these days to exceed him inside fame. It was thanks to Sassoon that Owen persevered within his ambition to write better poetry. The manuscript copy of Owen's Anthem for Doomed Youth, containing Sassoon's handwritten amendments, lives when testimony to the extent of his influence. To everthing intents & purposes, Sassoon became to Owen 'Keats & Christ & Elijah'; living documents demonstrate clearly a depth of Owen's love & admiration for him. Two men returned to active service inside France, however Owen was flushed inside 1918. Sassoon, getting spent a few instance away from danger within Palestine, eventually returned to the Front, was about immediately hurt again - by friendly fire, this time upstairs - & spent a remainder of the war within Britain. When a war, Sassoon was instrumental inside bringing Owen's act to the attention of the wider audience. Their friendly relationship is the subject of Stephen MacDonald's play, Not About Heroes.

Post-war

. He around the future commence the lecture tour of the United states, too when traveling in Europe & throughout Britain.

Sassoon was a great admirer of the Welsh poet, Henry Vaughan. In the visit to Wales in 1923, he paid a pilgrim's journey to Vaughan's grave at Llansanffraid, Powys, and there wrote one of his right-known peacetime verse form, At a Grave of Henry Vaughan. A deaths of ternion of his nearest friends, Edmund Gosse, Thomas Hardy and Frankie Schuster (the publisher), in the short space of instance, come when an additional good black eye to his private happiness.

). Inside late years, he revisited his youth & early manhood by owning ternary volumes of echt autobiography, which were besides widely acclaimed. These were The Old Century, A Weald of Youth & ''Siegfried's Journeying''.

Sassoon, by owning matured greatly following of his armed forces service, continued to search emotional fulfilment, which he initially attempted to locate inside a succession of romance with men, including the actor Ivor Novello; Novello's former lover, a actor Glen Byam Shaw; German aristocrat Prince Philipp of Hesse; the writer Beverley Nichols; and a decadent patrician a Hon. Stephen Tennant. Regrettably, Sassoon was used to get disenchanted using his lovers another time a number 1 dislodge of romance got faded. Inside 1933, to many humans's surprise, he married Hester Gatty, world health organization was numbers of years his junior; this action finally brought him a status of parent which he experienced yearn craved. Their lone tike, George (the noted linguist & creator), was innate around 1936. Still, a marriage broke down fallowing World War II. Separated from either his married woman witharound 1945, Sassoon sleep in seclusion at Heytesbury in Wiltshire, although he maintained contact sustaining the circle which included E. M. Forster and J. R. Ackerley. Towards a prevent of his yearn life, he was converted to Roman Catholicism, and was admitted to the faith at Downside Abbey, close to his personal. He likewise paid regular visits to the nuns at Stanbrook Abbey, and a abbey click printed commemorating editions of a few of his verse form. He is buried at Mells inside Somerset, close to Ronald Knox, whom he admired.

Sassoon's literary output
Poetry
A Narcissus pseudonarcissus Liquidator (John Richmond: 1913) A Old Hunter (Heinemann: 1917) Counter-Attack (Heinemann: 1918) Picture-Indicate (Heinemann: 1919) War Verse form (Heinemann: 1919) Recreations (privately printed: 1923) Lingual Exercises for Advanced Vocabularians (privately printed: 1925) Selected Verse form (Heinemann: 1925) Satiric Verse form (Heinemann: 1926) ''A Heart's Journeying (Heinemann: 1928) Verse form by Pinchbeck Lyre (Duckworth: 1931) A Road to Ruin (Faber & Faber: 1933) Vigils (Heinemann: 1935) Rhyming Ruminations (Faber & Faber: 1940) Verse form Recently Selected (Faber & Faber: 1940) Gathered Verse form (Faber & Faber: 1947) Most common Chords (privately printed: 1950/1951) Emblems of Personal experience (privately printed: 1951) A Tasking (privately printed: 1954) Sequences (Faber & Faber: 1956) Lenten Illuminations (privately printed: 1958) A Path to Peace (Stanbrook Abbey Click: 1960) Gathered Verse form 1908-1956 (Faber & Faber: 1961) A War Verse form ed. Rupert Hart-Davis (Faber & Faber: 1983)

Prose
Memoirs of the Dodger-Hunting Human (Faber & Gwyer: 1928) Memoirs of an Foot Officer (Faber & Faber: 1930) Sherston's Progress (Faber & Faber: 1936) Complete Memoirs of George Sherston (Faber & Faber: 1937) A Old Century (Faber & Faber: 1938) In Poetry (University of Bristol Click: 1939) A Weald of Youth (Faber & Faber: 1942) Siegfried's Journeying (Faber & Faber: 1945) Meredith'' (Constable: 1948)

Siegfried Sassoon
Biographical article from the Spartacus Encyclopedia.

Papers of Siegfried Sassoon
Index of manuscripts held at the Cambridge University Library.

Siegfried Sassoon
Short biography with links to a selection of his poems.

Counter Attack
Site dedicated to Sassoon and to Great War literature in general. The webmaster is working on a biography of Sassoon for publication.

Biography of Siegfried Sassoon
Biography of the author who wrote poetry describing the horror of war, mainly through the words of those who were there. Philip Graeme.

First World War.com: Siegfried Sassoon
Biography of the author of poetry and prose, including a list of his works.

Interactive Literature: Sassoon, Siegfried (Lorraine)
Biography and commentary on his works.

Guardian Unlimited Books - LRB Essay: History of a Foxhunting Man
LRB essay by Ferdinand Mount about Siegfried Sassoon and some recent books written about him.

Find A Grave - Siegfried Loraine Sassoon
Information about the First World War poet and pictures of him and his grave with cemetery facts and visitor comments.


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