Owen was the most original and challenging among the English soldier poets of the First World War. Killed in action at the age of 25, a week before the Armistice, he left behind a small body of work, most of it not published until 1920, that includes some of the most moving poems of war in the English language: “Strange Meeting”, “Futility”, “Anthem for Doomed Youth”, “Dulce and Decorum Est”, and others drafted during his recovery from shell-shock in 1917-18. In technique, he was the first poet in English to develop the possibilities of a form of half-rhyming which later became known as pararhyme.
Owen was born on 18 March, 1893, at Oswestry, Shropshire, the eldest child of Tom Owen, a railway official, and Susan Owen (née Shaw), the daughter of a prosperous local
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Citation: Baldick, Chris. "Wilfred Owen". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 26 September 2013 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4920, accessed 21 November 2024.]
