Isaac Rosenberg was born in Bristol on 25 November 1890 and killed in France on 1 April 1918, at the age of twenty-seven. His brief life has come to seem almost emblematic of a generation interrupted by the First World War, yet his achievement cannot be understood merely as the achievement of a “war poet.” Rosenberg was also a painter, draughtsman, reader, self-educator, son of Jewish immigrants, East End Londoner, a…
“I am determined that my poetry shall have the same primitive power as a painting.”
Neighbourhood:
Death & Mortality, Georgian Poets, War Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Fear
Wilfred Edward Salter Owen was born on 18 March 1893 at Plas Wilmot, a house near Oswestry in Shropshire, on the borderland between England and Wales. He was the eldest of four children of Thomas Owen and Susan Shaw Owen; his siblings were Mary, Harold, and Colin. The family’s circumstances were respectable but precarious. Thomas had once been employed as a railway stationmaster, and Susan came from a family with str…
“Suffer dishonour and disgrace, but never resort to arms. Be bullied, be outraged, be killed; but do not kill.”
Neighbourhood:
Death & Mortality, Edwardian Poets, Political Poets, War Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Irony
