Publisher's Synopsis
No poetry has touched readers' hearts more deeply than the soldier poets of the First World War. Published to commemorate the centenary of 1914, this stunning set of books, with specially commissioned covers by leading print makers, is an essential gathering of our most beloved war poets introduced by leading poets and biographers of our present day.
'In later years', Sir Rupert Hart-Davis writes in his Introduction, 'when Siegfried Sassoon had written much else in prose and verse, he was annoyed at always being referred to simply as a war poet, but it was the Great War that turned him into a poet of international fame, and I feel sure that his ghost will forgive me for thus bringing together these magnificently scarifying poems.'
The poems are arranged as far as possible in the order of their composition, and the reader can compare them with the poet's movements by means of the Biographical Table which is included. Fourteen of the poems in this volume were published for the first time in the 1983 edition of this work.
Sassoon's stature is now assured and recognised. This volume contains the poetry on which his reputation rests.
