Owen Attends Classes at University College, Reading
Poet involved
What happened
While serving as lay assistant in Dunsden, Owen takes classes in botany and later, at the urging of the English Department head, free lessons in Old English at University College, Reading (now the University of Reading).
Literary impact
These informal studies broadened Owen's intellectual horizons and introduced him to the discipline of philology, which sharpened his sensitivity to the sounds and etymologies of English words. The Old English lessons in particular influenced his later experiments with alliterative verse and the stark, Anglo-Saxon diction that gives his war poems their distinctive power.
Source: Wikipedia
