Among the British “soldier poets” of the First World War, Sassoon was the leading practitioner of satirical protest verse, voicing the resentment of active servicemen against the military staff and against complacent civilians – especially propagandists – at home. The war, set in contrast with his own sheltered youth, remained at the centre of his literary life for decades after the Armistice, as he devoted himself to autobiographical prose writings while his post-war poetry – at first satirical but increasingly religious in later years – failed to match the success of his wartime collections
The Old Huntsman(May 1917) and
Counter-Attack(June 1918).
Born on 8 September, 1886, Sassoon grew up in rural Kent near Tunbridge Wells with his two brothers, under the dominant
1927 words
Citation: Baldick, Chris. "Siegfried Sassoon". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 26 September 2013 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4919, accessed 23 November 2024.]
