Charles Hamilton Sorley was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, on 19 May 1895, and was killed in France on 13 October 1915, not yet twenty-one years old. His literary life lasted only a few years, and his published body of verse was small, much of it assembled after his death. Yet he occupies a singular place among the poets of the First World War. Unlike writers whose work became famous through prolonged service, later dis…
“Mutual helplessness and lassitude, as when two boxers who have battered each other crouch dancing two paces from each other, waiting for the other to hit. This is not Hell as I hoped, but Limbo Lake with green growths on the water, full of minnows.”
Neighbourhood:
Death & Mortality, Edwardian Poets, War Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Longing, Despair
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…
“Catalogue? Photograph? Can you photograph the crimson-hot iron as it cools from the smelting? That is what Jones's blood looked like, and felt like. My senses are charred.”
Neighbourhood:
Death & Mortality, Edwardian Poets, Political Poets, War Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Irony
