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1893-1918
Poet; born at Plas Wilmot, a large house in Weston Lane, Oswestry, belonging to his maternal grandparents. After their deaths Owen's father, a railway worker, obtained a job in Birkenhead (Wilfred was then four years of age) so the family moved there. In 1907 Mr. Owen was transferred to Shrewsbury and they rented a house, firstly at 1 Cleveland Place and later at 71 Monkmoor Road, a house which they named Mahim (the house has a commemorative plaque to Wilfred Owen). Wilfred, already an aspiring poet, attended Shrewsbury Technical School but was unable to go to university, in spite of passing the London University Matriculation, because of financial restrictions. He taught for a short time at the elementary school on Wyle Cop in Shrewsbury before going to Dunsden in Oxfordshire as lay assistant to the vicar, an appointment which led to him coming close to suffering a nervous breakdown.
Then followed a period in France as a private family tutor during which time war broke out with Germany. In 1915 he enlisted in the Artists Rifles and was later commissioned into the Manchester Regiment. He was posted to France in 1916, the year of the Somme offensive, and endured the awful hardship and horror of life and death in the trenches. These experiences, not surprisingly, changed him dramatically. In fact he changed from a rather effeminate and not entirely likeable youth to a man who cared deeply and unselfishly for the safety and welfare of his fellow soldiers.
He had written poetry for some years, some of it quite good, much of it sub-Keatsian in style. Now he began to write with purpose and direction, based on the terrible experiences of the trenches, with a new and far-seeing maturity. He returned to Britain suffering from shell-shock and had the good fortune to become acquainted with Siegfried Sassoon, an accomplished poet and outspoken critic of the war, while recovering at Craiglochart War Hospital in Edinburgh. Sassoon's advice and support gave further impetus to Owen's tremendous literary talent. In a period that measured somewhat less than two years, Wilfred Owen wrote some of the finest and most moving of all poems about war; among his best known pieces are Dulce Et Decorum Est and Anthem For Doomed Youth.
Owen returned to France in August 1918 and was soon involved in heavy fighting in the final offensives of the war. He was awarded the Military Cross but was killed by machine gun fire on November 4th, 1918, just one week before the Armistice, while trying to cross the Sambre Canal with his men. News of his death reached his parents in Shrewsbury on Armistice Day itself, as church bells were ringing out in celebration. Wilfred Owen was surely Shropshire's greatest writer, one whose words transcend the particular and speak to all people for all time.
From An Illustrated Literary Guide to Shropshire by Gordon Dickins, published by Shropshire Libraries, 1987. © Gordon Dickins, 1987.
The following works are available in the West Midlands Creative Literature Collection:-
Collected letters, edited by Harold Owen and John Bell
(1967)
Poems, edited by Jon Stallworthy (1985)
The poems of Wilfred Owen, edited by Edmund Blunden
(1931)
War poems and others, edited by Dominic Hibberd (1973)
The following e-texts may be read online on this site:-
Selected e-texts are available for download or for reading online from these other sites:-
The following works are available in the West Midlands Creative Literature Collection:-
Journey from obscurity; Wilfred Owen 1893-1918
(1963-1965) by Harold Owen (3 volumes)
Owen the poet (1986) by Dominic Hibberd
Wilfred Owen. Chatterton Lecture on an English poet,
British Academy (1970) by John Stallworthy
The truth of war; Owen, Blunden and Rosenberg (1984) by
Desmond Graham
Wilfred Owen, anthem for a doomed youth (1987) by Kenneth
Simcox
Wilfred Owen, a critical study (1960) by Dennis
Welland
Wilfred Owen (1993) by Merryn Williams (Border Lines
series)
Wilfred Owen (1975) by Dominic Hibberd
Selected poems Wilfred Owen [Notes](1986) by Benedikte
Uttenthal
Two essential websites to visit are the Wilfred Owen Multimedia Digital Archive, which gives e-texts and photographs of manuscripts, and the Wilfred Owen Association, containing a biography and photographs.
Page created 9 February 2001 and last
updated 28 October 2002
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