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Customer Reviews (5)

Incredible!
I cried when I read these poems.For the first time, I read words that told the truth of war. ALL war.Not bugles, glory and parades, but Blood, pain, muck, outrage at stupidity and all but certain DEATH.This book should be required reading in all high schools, both for the perfection of the poetry, and its truth.

I have no illusions:War and Country are eternal.Young men and women will march off into eternity as long as there are human beings.

At least if they read this magnificentpoetry, they will know what they are getting into....

Sassoon
Like his poems, this book is short, to the point, and well worth reading.Highly recommended

The Base Details of War
I admit I am not one much for poetry, but ever since I read Martin Gilbert's THE FIRST WORLD WAR, which was replete with poetry written in the heat of battle, I've learned that verse is one of the most effective ways for a combat veteran to communicate the experiences of war. Siegfried Sassoon's aptly-titled WAR POEMS, compiled by Rupert Hart-Davis, is less a book of poetry than a guided tour through the muck, duckboards and barbed wire of No Man's Land.

Sassoon was a paradox as a human being. A sensitive and cultivated man and a world-famous poet when still in his twenties, he was also a ferocious fighter on the battlefield, dubbed "Mad Jack" by his men and a holder of the prestigious Military Cross. Disenchanted by the wastage and slaughter he had experienced, in 1917 he wrote a denunciation of the war and was promptly shut up in an asylum in Craiglockhart, Britain, where he composed many of the poems that appear in this book. Later he returned to the front and was shot in the head, but survived and enjoyed a prolific and diverse writing career, somewhat annoyed (as Hart-Davis tells us) that he had gone down in history as a "war poet." Reading this book, however, it is easy to see why.

Hart-Davis has arranged the 111 poems in chronological order, so that the reader can follow Sassoon's emotional journey from a naive young subaltern filled with a quasi-religious sense of mission (in 1915) to an embittered, half-delirious veteran driven to the edge of his sanity by relentless horror. And truly his poems run the range of emotions, from the mundanities of trench life ("A Working Party"; "In An Underground Dressing Station") to the moments before the ball went up ("Before the Batlle") to fury of combat itself ("Counter Attack") and its aftermath ("Died of Wounds"). Every aspect of the war is discussed, from war-fever to cowardice, from the bungling and incompetence of generals to the bluster of civilians back in England. Sometimes he's filled with rage and grief; other times with admiration and pathos (as with "Remorse", his paen to German prisoners run through with bayonets after an attack). But always there's the keen intelligence, the gift for words, the startling ability to convey image in just a few syllables, that mark the true genius-writer. See "The General:"

"Good morning, good morning" the general said
When we met him last week on our way to the line
Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of 'em dead
And we're cursing his staff for incompetent swine
"He's a cheery old card," grunted Harry to Jack
As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.

But he did for them both with his plan of attack.

Of course quoting from the best of the WAR POEMS would fill 30 pages, so I'll leave you with the words of "Base Details."

If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath,
I'd live with scarlet Majors at the Base,
and speed young heroes up the line to death.

You'd see my puffy petulant face,
Guzzling and gulping in the best hotel,
Reading the Roll of Honor, "Poor young chap."
I'd say -- "I used to know his father well;
Yes, we lost heavily in this last scrap."
And when the war is done and youth stone dead,
I'd toddle safely home and die -- in bed.

THE COST OF QUALITY
There's no question that Siegfried Sassoons's is the finest of the World War I poetry. How the poems are presented to the reader is A PROBLEM. Publishers employ "lick and a polish" guys who excell at slight touch-ups to a graphic design that enables the corporation to double the book price. THIS BOOK."THE WAR POEMS OF SIEGFRIED SASSOON",COSTS TOO MUCH. If Sassoons poems were the value for the money, hooray. But we're not paying the money to Sassoon. Sassoon has been dead for half a century. Sassoon does not, therefore, benefit from the high cost of the publication. Poems: GREAT. book: OVER-PRICED.

Siegfried Sassoon's War Poems
I do not read much poetry, but for various reasons I wanted to read some of the British WWI poets because I knew they didn't mince words about the horror of infantry combat. Sassoon does not disappoint. His poems drip withbite, sarcasm, and some bitterness, but at the same time they are elegantlyrhymed and the images are powerful. War is nasty business, not glorious,and it is also stupid. WWI was the end of innocence and the poets who wroteof their war experiences brought home the irony of that innocence in theface of the devastation that was wrought. A sample will help.

Stand-to:Good Friday Morning

I'd been on duty from two till four. I went andstared at the dug-out door. Down in the frowst I heard them snore."Stand to!" Somebody grunted and swore. Dawn was misty; the skieswere still' Larks were singing, discordant, shrill; They seemed happy; butI felt ill. Deep in water I splashed my way Up the trench to our boggedfront line. Rain had fallen the whole damned night. O Jesus, send me awound to-day, And I'll believe in Your bread and wine, And get my bloodyold sins washed white!

This collection includes the notes that Sassoonadded as commentary on some of his poems. On the above poem Sassoon notes:"I haven't shown this to any clergyman. But soldiers say they feellike that sometimes."

This is poetry that grabs you and moves you,but it is a particular genre, not for everyone's taste. If one purpose ofpoetry is to allow us to see through some of life's darker experiences,then this collection is well worth your reading and reflection. ... Read more

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An irreverent look at British military leaders during WW1, written by the Hawthornden-Prize winning author. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (13)

Truth Through the Veil of Fiction
While perhaps best known for his poetry written during WWI, Siegfried Sassoonwas a very talented wordsmith in general, a trait that is demonstrated in his second semi-fictionalized autobiography, "Memoirs of an Infantry Officer".Sassoon chose to fictionalize his accounts of his life, an odd technique that allows him to distance himself from these experiences as he intimately describes the raw emotion and response behind them.In his three memoirs he is George Sherston, a thinly veiled version of himself, who thinnly veils the real-life characters he encountered during these times.

Readers are automatically flung into Sassoon's war experience, from the disjointed and fantastical training, to the brutal reality of life in the trenches.Sassoon describes these experiences in vivid detail, the sheer misery of trench warfare, the almost callous attitude toward the dead on both sides, and the surreal life led by those back home.Sassoon, nicknamed "Mad Jack" for his stubborness and seemingly sheer lunacy at times, was awfully lucky during his battle campaigns.He was wounded a few times, always sent back home to England to recuperate, and almost happy to return to the war.

However, after one session as an invalid, Sassoon begins to recognize that the war may not be all it's cracked up to be, that those in power are not telling the truth about their war aims, and that he may just be a lowly pawn in a game he doesn't want to play.Towards the end of his narrative, Sassoon tells of his decision to speak out against the war, even if it meant being court martialed.This act, filtered with courage and fear, is achingly portrayed as an act both necessary and questionable: as Sassoon places himself in danger, he questions his true beliefs in the matter.This account ends just as Sassoon enters the hospital in Scotland, avoiding court martial with a diagnosis of shell shock, 'lucky' as usual.

"Memoirs of an Infantry Officer" is a vividly descriptive account of life in the trenches during WWI.Sassoon is a gifted storyteller, who can make even the direst settings come to life.He offers a unique insight into the soldier poets who first questioned whether or not war was such a noble and glorious pursuit and if the sacrifice of lives was worth the price in the end.While a little slow at times, the last quarter of the narrative which details Sassoon's questioning of the war, is a brilliantly written firsthand look at how a too little celebrated writer finally found his voice.

Classic Tale of Educated English Life Smashed into Disillusion of WWI
Continuing tale of the Cambridge-educated English Officer living the hell of warfare on the Western Front: replete with adoring batman, blustering colonel Blimps, out of control colonials (Australians and Canadians), journeys to England on home leave to meet misinformed civilians. Sasson has a style that waxes between light and lyrical, cynical and dark and starkly realistic. It is reminiscent of Graves but less dark than Blunden.

This is a tale of the human mind (an upper crust mind) that makes the journey from old world to that of the lost generation -- but Sassoon never loses himself. It shows that the mind-set was already there capable of dissecting and throwing away the old world view tradition. With capable honesty Sassoon relates the contradictions in life, army and mind set of the pre-war generation. He still takes advantage of the liesure of the educated class; his batman pours his tea, he still sees the colonials as slightly quaint and backwards (especially the Australians), still finds refuge among his educated Cambridge intellectuals -- this is no tale of class struggle.

This book can read as part of his trilogy lifestyle or on its own. It has many haunting vignettes and is perhaps one of the top 5 WWI memoirs. Highly recommended.

Sassoons's great work
Terrific book that sounded a bit autobiographical. Sassoon, of course, was a war hero on the battle of the Somme, decorated twice for bravery.

The book reads lyrically and is convey's nicely the daily life of soldiers moving back and forth from the front fighting trenches to the rear area of the battle field. He also does a great job portraying the strangeness and inner conflict of being back in British society (while recovering from illness) with people who know nothing of the war or its cost to the participants.

A Brit's version of "All Quiet ..."

Vivid account life at the front line during WW1.
Siegfried Sassons' "Memoirs of an Infantry Officer" is a first-hand account of life at the front line during World War 1. This is not a just a historical document or diary however. Sassoon writes via an alter-ego called George. In real life, Sassoon was an infantry officer who fought at the front, but eventually grew suspicious of the reasons for the continuation of World War 1, and as such became a dissenter. This book may be fiction, but it is based on fact and it gives an impressive account of what life must have been like in those trenches, nearly a hundred years ago. Sassoon's incredible ability with words paints a much more vivid picture than any war movie will ever provide.

George was a middle-class officer who had the luxury of a university education and was an avid reader of classic English literature. He juxtaposes the themes and ideas in this romantic poetry with the realities of life at the front to great effect. Although a tad repetitive in it's ideas (perhaps to get the point across clearly), this book is rewarding and still relevant this whole century later. As one character in the book says, "In war-time the word patriotism means suppression of truth" .

Memoir in the tradition of Graves and Orwell
Siegfreid Sassoon's wonderful war memoir is thinly disguised as the story of George Sherston. Based solely on Sassoon's life in the trenches of WWI, it recounts the horror and scale of carnage that occurred. More importantly it shows the emotionally scars that the survivors carried with them as a result of exposure.

Sherston (Sassoon) was a rather spoiled and pampered young upper class Englishman. The war changed all that. Confronted with death, destruction and idiotic leadership from the High Command you sense the inner turmoil of Sherston.

Relieved when he is not involved with the fighting he is driven by guilt over the loss of the soldiers in his battalion. Consequently when his platoon is on the line he takes great risks in reconaissance of the German positions.

The effects of non-stop total war, stupid leadership and the complete contrast between England and the trenches (only a few hundred miles apart) is staggering to Sassoon. Sassoon becomes anti-war and considers becoming an objector, but his obvious connection to his comrades and loyalty to them wins out in the end. He hates the war but won't abandon his comrades in the field.

This is a great war memoir written by a poet who survived and was changed for life by his experiences in it. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Seigfried Sasson through his own eyes.
I recommend reading this along with some other biography of Sassoon. The concordances and the differences are stunning. The factual revelations of his life which he does not reveal in these paired biographies/novels are remarkable.Sassoon writes well. The fox hunting classes of England, what must have been going on in their hearts in pre WW1 years unfolds before you. These novels are description of a class of people as well a an insight into Sassoon and the question of where his poetry "came from". A fascinating man with a life whose real events were compressed into a short time. A great study for those interested in Georgian England, in WW1 and in Sassoon himself or other WW1 poets. ... Read more

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The Pathos Behind the Poems
In the aftermath of WWI, Siegfried Sassoon became known as a "soldier-poet", a fighter who recorded his experiences in verse.What made Sassoon's experience unique was that those who fought in the trenches saw a new brand of warfare and the horrors that went with it: they recorded these atrocities and their sense of betrayal at being told that war was a glorious and noble enterprise.And Siegfried Sassoon, one of the more famous soldier poets to survive, became a voice for that generation, but was ultimately trapped by his war time world.

Born half-Jewish, but raised away from the faith, Siegfried Sassoon lived a somewhat sheltered life, the middle of three boys whose father had abandoned them when they were young.Growing up, he wished for a more wealthy and aristocratic upbringing, thinking that many things had been denied him by his father's deseration and susequent death.He knew almost immediately that he was not like other boys, for he was shy and introspective, cocooned in a shroud of creativity and writing.Knowing that he had to break away from the oppressiveness of his mother's slightly overprotective love, he enlisted in the service, and his life fianlly began on the battlefield.

Much has been documented about Sassoon's war time heroics, which earned him a Military Cross and the nickname 'Mad Jack' for his danger-seeking ways.Perhaps more than the poetry he wrote during the war, which showcased the true horrors of modern warfare and satirized those in charge, Sassoon is famous for his anti-war declaration - a statement that caused him not to be court-martialed, but to be sent to Craiglockhart, a supposed sufferer of shellshock.It was there that he met the ill-fated fellow soldier poet, Wilfred Owen, who looked upon Sassoon as a mentor.But usually, that is where the story ends: most people do not know much about Sassoon beyond that point.

Max Egremont does a remarkable job in documenting Sassoon's life.One definitely needs a familiarity with Sassoon's poetry, especially to enjoy Egremont's critiques of his poems, from the famous war poems, to the ones he struggled with later in life that are not so well known.Egremont explores all facets of Sassoon's life, from his time in the trenches, to his homosexual affairs (and most famous partner), to his sudden marriage and eventual conversion to Roman Catholicism.Max Egremont allows readers to see the physical and psychological strains Sassoon experienced as a homosexual in a less accepting and more persecuting time: he doesn't shy away from details that may prove unseemly, but lays bare the entire man.Readers can experience fully this almost paradoxical being, described as shy and bumbling, aloof and haughty, always craving more recognition than he was given, always drawing others to him as if he were an idol to worship.

In his writing life after the war, Sassoon became more famous for his prose than his poetry, with his three attempts to document his life through fictionalized autobiograhies.What he achieved with all three, but especially the first, "Memoirs of a Fox Hunting Man", was to create an idyllic picture of England, a time lost forever encapsulated by the author's innocence.But these accounts leave out much from his life and do not give a full picture of this enigmatic man.Whether he realized it or not, Sassoon did receive a fair amount of recognition in his time, much more than he receives now.While his best poems are arguably those written during WWI, his other writings offer a glimpse at a world that changed before his eyes at the turn of the century, and the role that WWI played in that.His is a voice not just for his generation, but for all generations, and Max Egremont demonstrates that in this intelligent and thorough biography.

Don't let this writer disappear
Siegfried Sassoon has much more to say about the world, indeed about our times, then some much more contemporary writers.

While many people focus on his 'war poetry,' his relationship with Stephen Tennant, and his family's wealth and fame, what I find most striking is his ability to document a time of change, the first decades of the 20th century.The changes in England at that time: a time of the lowering importance of an aristocratic class; the demise of agrarian values; the changes in mores and manners, are they really that different then America in the first few years of this century with its shift of importance to the blue states; diminishing value of science; a nation where someone thinks up the idea to protest at a soldier's funeral.These changes are as puzzling to me as mustard gas, and a diminishing of un-earned income was to Sassoon.

Do yourself a favor.Read all you can by and about this brilliant man.I would suggest you start with "Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man."

Seigfried Sasson, The Poet
The horrors of World War I are usually set forth by historians, but the poets paint a seriously moving portrait. Sasson is one of the best. I do become tired of the author constant reference to Sasson's sexual preference.

Siegfried Sassoon:A Life
This is probably the most boring, worst book I have ever read.It is filled with miniscule details which are of no interest and devoid of his romances, affairs, and real personality. ... Read more

Product Description
Drama

Characters: 2 males

Set Requirements: Unit set

"Dulce et decorum est/Pro patria mori", facetiously penned British poet Wilfred Owen, who was soon to die in the Great War. It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. This moving play is about the poetic life and the inter relationship between two of the finest Great War poets: Owen who died and Siegfried Sasson who didn't. Told by means of letters and poetry, Not About Heroes paints a vivid picture of the war. It was staged to great acclaim at the Williamstown Theatre Festival and had an Off Broadway run. ... Read more

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Counter-Attack and Other Poems. please visit www.valdebooks.com for a full list of titles ... Read more

Product Description
This Halcyon Classics ebook collection contains 70 poems by British World War I veteran and poet of anti-war verse Siegfried Sassoon.

This ebook is DRM free and includes an active table of contents.

CONTENTS:

Prelude: The Troops
Counter-Attack
The Rear-Guard
Wirers
Attack
Dreamers
How To Die
The Effect
Twelve Months After
The Fathers
Base Details
The General
Lamentations
Does It Matter?
Fight To A Finish
Editorial Impressions
Suicide In The Trenches
Glory Of Women
Their Frailty
The Hawthorn Tree
The Investiture
Trench Duty
Break Of Day
To Any Dead Officer
Sick Leave
Banishment
Song-Books Of The War
Thrushes
Autumn
Invocation
Repression Of War Experience
The Triumph
Survivors
Joy-Bells
Remorse
Dead Musicians
The Dream
In Barracks
Together
The Redeemer
A Working Party
Stand-To: Good Friday Morning
In The Pink
The Hero
Before The Battle
The Road
Two Hundred Years After
At Carnoy
Battalion Relief
The Dug-Out
I Stood With The Dead
In An Underground Dressing-Station
Died Of Wounds
They
Atrocities
Blighters
Arms And The Man
When I'm Among A Blaze Of Lights ...
The Kiss
The Tombstone-Maker
The One-Legged Man
Return Of The Heroes
Concert Party
Night On The Convoy
A Letter Home
Reconciliation
Memorial Tablet
The Death-Bed
Aftermath
Everyone Sang
... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Superb, Please Read
There are 100,000 pretentious academic dissertations @ Siegfried Sassoon.Don't read them.Read "Memoirs," instead.

This is a hell of a book. The complexity of Siegfried's writing - aside from its often spell-binding beauty - forced me to read it very carefully, like a jeweler confronted to slowly examine a stone to be cut - a gem he's never seen before.

Musings...a 1st Edition (Am.), there'll be no marking up this book; this isn't Roberts' ten-dollar Napoleon & Wellington (& what idiot previous owner - the Fox was bought in the Ballad - threw the dust jacket away?!)...Odd realization: For once, I was reading a writer's memoir...that had nothing to do with the death of standards at The New Yorker ("Gone," "A Life of Privilege, Mostly," etc.).

MFH did not get off to a smooth start - or rather, I with it.A good deal of the first third of the book should have been trimmed.Our apprehensions at the ages of four & seven - who cares?His interminable, meaningless cricket games - what an incomprehensible morass (the terminology is bewildering).

And the dotty story @ his aunt's preparation of a hot cup of tea, on a cold primitive train, derailed the narrative as well.The author in real life dropped out of Cambridge - & these first 100 pages - weed-choked with century-old slang - almost motivated me to do the same with his memoir.

But perseverance paid off.The ending of the chapter, "A Day With The Potsford" - with its narrative tone down-shifting from a high octave of excitement then being lowered to his aunt's self-sensible concern @ the matted hair of her pet Persian cat - is so impressive, it is breath-taking.

And from then on, there are individual sentences as beautiful as anything I've ever read - & splendidly unique, a quality adding an allure I've never seen.MFH "appeared anonymously in October 1928 & delighted the public with its sensitive charm & wit."It still does, & how.

"As the [church] service proceeded, I glanced furtively around me at the prudent Sunday-like faces of the congregation.I thought of the world outside, & the comparison made life out there seem...unreal.I felt as if we were all on our way to next week in a ship."

"Memory enchants even the dilatory little train journey which carried my expectant simplicity into the freshness of a country seen for the first time."

Having first read "The Sassoons," of course, I know that this (mostly) idyllic story of his gradual development into a fox hunting gentleman must come to a brutal end, for he was primarily famous then, & noted today, as a heroic & disillusioned wartime infantry officer.

John Keegan broadly claims that at the time, almost no one in Europe saw World War I coming - that the possibility of war, on the immense scale that it did become, had been preemptively dismissed out of hand.This is stated in miniature in MFH, six years before Keegan had been born.

"War had become an impossibility" - something that would never disrupt the world of the admired huntress, Mrs. Oakfield - "She had the secret of style" - & her Midland fox hunting set, "it's uniqueness as it was when I was a unit in its hurry of hoofs & covert-side chatter."

War, instead, became everything.The hunts disappeared, the horses themselves conscripted for service.He immediately signed up as an enlisted man."Never before had I known how much I had to lose...as I sat on the ground with my half-cleaned saddle...I felt very much a man dedicated to death."During his last village cricket game at home, "outwardly, the match had been normally conducted, but there was something in the sunshine which none of us had ever known before that calamitous Monday."

He broke an arm in a training accident & was laid up for an extraordinary time when the bone resisted healing.Then, finally whole, he received a transfer to another unit, was promoted to subaltern (2nd lieutenant?), & sent to London to Craven & Stone for a tailored officer's uniform.The officious Mr. Stoving was there to measure & outfit him.

He "chatted his way courageously through the War; 'business as usual' was his watchword.Undaunted by the ever more bloated bulk of the Army List, he bobbed like a cork on the lethal inundation of temporary [military] commissions, & when I last saw him, a few months before the Armistice, he was still outwardly unconscious of the casualty lists which had lost (& gained) him such a legion of customers."

His friends & acquaintances start getting it, even before he was finally shipped over with hordes of other replacement soldiers to France in mid-1915 - where he was then (fortuitously) posted with a battalion recently decimated up in battle.The reconstituted unit was then sent to the rear for the benefit of its few surviving, silent veterans.The "grumble & rumble" of distant heavy artillery exchanges tailed off as they slowly made their way to the west, the front-line night flares still illuminating the sky.

After a final grueling 17-mile nighttime hike, they were finally assigned to a small village where "we were all five of us sitting around the fire in my billet, which had...a clock that ticked sedately, as if there were no war on."

He received a letter from Dixon, the man who had most skillfully guided his development as a juvenile rider while working for Sassoon's aunt as carriage driver (Sassoon's parents had both died prematurely & he had been sent to live with his aunt.See Footnote One, below).

By then, R&R was over; the battalion had been moved up & into a stationary position much closer to the fighting.They're not engaged in battle, but the sniper fire & the maintenance work in trenches damaged by artillery & mine explosions was still very, very lethal.It was now a completely grim existence.

Dixon, having earlier volunteered for a cavalry support unit also now stationed in France, "had been wondering, sir...whether it might possibly be fixed up for me to exchange into your battalion...it would be quite like old times for me to be your transport-sergeant.That was a rotten business @ Mr. Colwood being killed, sir.We shall all miss him very much when this War is over."

"Dixon's letter sent me off into pleasant imagining...everything I had known before the War seemed to be withering away & falling to pieces...I wanted the past to survive & begin again; the idea [of re-uniting with Dixon] was like daylight..."

An older, wiser officer - concerned for Dixon's safety should the unit suddenly be transferred into active battle: "Things change pretty quick nowadays" - persuaded Sassoon not to arraign the transfer.Three weeks later, the letter that Sassoon had sent his old fox hunt batman was answered by another, signed by a stranger.Dixon had died of pneumonia.And then his closest friend, Dick Tiltwood, was killed by sniper fire.In the sullen aftermath, sleep became "a wonderful thing when one came back from the Line [trench duty]; but to awake was to remember."

The book ends drenched in the unspoken feeling of the author's own remoteness from everything, on Easter Sunday in 1916.His past having completely vanished, so now, will he.It is the end of a book with no ending.

And I imagine that, subconsciously, that is exactly how Sassoon intended it to be."For two years later...he published a sequel...recalling his experiences of the Somme & Arras with an understatement & integrity that have stamped 'Memoirs of an Infantry Officer' as a modern classic."


*****

Footnote One: A clarification: In the memoir, they both died when Siegfried was very young.But in real life, this was not the case.

Siegfried's father, Alfred (who had abandoned Sig's mother, Theresa) did die at the age of 34 in 1895.Sig, age nine, was traumatized, so much so that he could not attend the funeral.

But his mother, Theresa, lived long enough to sketch a picture of her teenage son engaged in a steeplechase jump, a photograph of which was inserted into the book.So her demise could not have arrived prematurely.

But that's all I can conclude.The numbskull who drew up the family genealogical map in "The Sassoons" omitted the years of Theresa's birth & death.And rounding out the Idiot Exacta was the same book's index preparer - who omitted "death of" from Theresa's listing, & "death of mother" from Siegfried's listing.

The trouble that these dual omissions created was incredible.It took forever to research these basic facts, one of which is still unresolved.And it will not be.I am not going to waste my time re-reading dozens of pages to see if I can discover the year in which she passed away.

***

Addendum to the last line: "The Sassoons," Stanley Jackson: The bibliography of this invaluable book lists the later-published "Memoirs of An Infantry Officer" (London, Faber, 1931), but not "Memoirs of A Fox Hunting Man" (1928; published anonymously).

An excellent perspective of a world reluctant but forced into change
I read this book because of my early love of the War Poets, Sassoon, Wilfred Owen and Robert Graves.
What I had not expected was to find myself transported into a nearly forgotten time where Summer was glorious and England was feeling safe, secure and on top of the world.
Yes, they knew that things were a "bit iffy" in Europe. Yes they could see that the USA and Germany could challenge them economically - if not on the seas.
I had read Robert Massie's book Dreadnought which had a solid military-political perspective of the time following Bismarck and his unification of Germany.
This book filled in the missing pieces in my mind to show just why the English and Europeans were so unprepared to fight a total war. And why the aristocracy was so casually careless of the lives of ordinary soldiers.
I wept for the innocence of young men suddenly thrown into the teeth of machine gun fire and massive explosive shells. I smiled and felt comfortable at the descriptions of park cricket at a time that this was the noblest conflict that a young man might pursue.

From the Hunt to the Front
Perhaps the best way to classify "Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man" is as an autobiographical novel; the details and events described are Sassoon's personal experiences in disguise.This book serves as the first of a trilogy, covering the author's early days up through his initial military service during WWI.Even though it is written as a novel, the truth of the author's life shines through.

The narrator of "Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man" is George Sherston, a young orphan left to live with his aunt in the remote English countryside.He is a shy, reticent and awkward boy who learns gradually to flourish under the tutelage of his aunt's stablehand, Tom Dixon.Dixon teaches young George to ride and play cricket, and as he grows he eventually makes a name for himself among the fox hunting circuit and among horse racers.George drops out of Cambridge to pursue a life of leisure (one that he cannot afford) and finds himself entering the military just before war is declared.

The narrative is surprisingly fast-paced and evocative to begin with.Sassoon has a manner of drawing readers into the story through the quaint and idyllic reminisences of a spoiled young man.Yet readers may soon become distracted with George Sherston's snobbery, his diffidence towards those who care about him and have his best interests at heart, and his pretentious attitude towards his station in life.There are also times when readers can see the author shining through his characters, in scattered asides he drops the mask he holds before him and tells it as it is."Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man" may not be for everyone, but is a definite must-read for any fan of Sassoon's poetry; it is a window into the world of a man who helped to shape the course of literature after WWI.

Interesting Vignette on Rural England Dreams Whilst the World Heads for Disaster
I read this book because I entered Sassoon first by reading his "Memoirs of an Infantry Officer." Since Sassoon has always been one of my favourite poets I thought this would allow me to see into the mind of one raised in the English Countryside at the turn of the 20th Century.

There is a lot of fox hunting here and if I was encouraged to be more sympathetic to a bunch of upper-class twits running in their finest allowing hounds to do most the work, then this book, for all its description did not engender such feelings. (Being born in Canada, real men and women hunt their animals on foot, are forbidden from using dogs in any form of hunting and a real man shoots one's game over open sights... preferably after that person has hiked over a few mountains on foot. The game is then carried out of the bush, by yourself. There are no manservants, no shared drinking of spirits or chance to rest). But the descriptions of rural life and Sassoon's existence between some limited previledge yet not quite a member of the upper classes was an interesting perspective on this time.

Sassoon writes well and economical. There is little real adventure here and the book would be one that I could recommend to someone who is thinking of touring the quite country lanes of Kent in the summer time, or open whilst on top of Downs on a sunny day. It is a reflection of rural (but not country) life in the soft cotton covered English existence while the world heads for collective insanity.

Sassoon and book eventually drift to war and the last third of the book is about him forsaking Cambridge, taking a commission and eventually heading to the front. While around him his mates, his footmen and other collegues are blown to pieces or otherwise changed unalterably by the war. Sigfried ends the book after the disasterous battles of Loos (where Kipling's son was killed) and the writing style starts to take on a melancholy and more stark tone continued in his "Memoirs of an Infantry Officer".

A good book and one worth the read for the country vignettes.

Languid evocation of Rural U.K. ca. 1900
This is a very good place to commence the life of Sassoon, better known in my country as a great poet of the First World War. Having only the briefest of equestrian experience in rural Dorset and the slightest of brushes with the class structure existing even in a small village, most of Sassoon's marvellously recounted youth falls well beyond this Aussie's radar. I found the quaint rituals of horseriding and foxing fascinating; the fact of a life so given to the pursuit of pleasure, utterly bemusing. Sassoon's everpresent sense of how protected all this was, and how he could place such significance, say, on the purchase of a riding cap, saves this work from charges of class pretension. Though an acute observer, he is amazingly free, in his writing, from the sense of superiority exuding from many of the class he aspires to join.The idyll comes crashing down with the outbreak of War, and the loss of his closest friends are sobering moments, never milked for any self-pity. His writing is exquisite,full of easy phrasings that scroll as readily on his page as the gentle topography of those pleasant pastures green. As eloquent as the succeeding volumes of this series are, I believe this is the most satisfying. Is that, perhaps, because the catostrophe of the trenches was so brilliantly trapped on silent film? iMAGES OF The Great War jittered across our tele screens in the mid 1960s, possibly with the hidden message of consolidating youthful support for our conscription to the Vietnam conflict. I was almost paralysed with fear each Sunday as I sat hypnotised before the unspooling of those oancient black and white atrocities. The effect induced a wholesome loathing of nationalism and all futile expressions on foreign soils. ... Read more

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The World War I poet Siegfried Sassoon is one of the twentieth century's greatest icons and Jean Moorcroft Wilson is the leading authority on him. In Siegfried Sassoon: The Journey from the Trenches, the second volume of her best-selling, authorized biography, Wilson completes her definitive analysis of his life and works, exploring Sassoon's experiences after the Great War. For many people, Sassoon exists primarily as a First World War poet and bold fighter, who earned the nickname 'Mad Jack' in the trenches and risked Court Martial, possibly the firing squad, with his public protest against the War. Much less is known about his life after the Armistice. Wilson uncovers a series of love affairs with such larger-than-life characters as Queen Victoria's great-grandson, Prince Phillip of Hesse, the flamboyant Ivor Novello and the exotic and bejewelled Stephen Tennant. This period also sees Sassoon establishing close friendships with some of the greatest literary figures of the age, Hardy, Beerbohm, E. M. Forster and T. E.Lawrence among them. Sassoon himself said that most people thought he had died in 1919. But Wilson shows that his poetry is, if anything, more powerful in the second half of his life. Based on a decade of meticulous research and interviews with many who knew Sassoon well. Siegfried Sassoon: The Journey from the Trenches completes a fascinating story that is beautifully told. ... Read more

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An Enlightening Life of a Minor Poet
What makes some poets great and leaves others to become forgotten by history?To be fair, you can't call Siegfried Sassoon forgotten, since Jean Moorcroft Wilson has spent twelve years or more researching every known fact of his life.And because he lived into the era of VietNam and the "summer of love," an astonishing number of people who are still alive remember him.She has done a wonderful job combing through his papers and coming up with real, solid evidence about the facts of his life, the emotional, sexual and aesthetic complexities of the man.

And yet at the same time, one thinks that she is making slightly a mountain out of a molehill when it comes to her failed attempt to build him up as a writer of permanent interest.Sassoon interested the generation of Georgians who followed the dictates of taste that Edward Marsh laid down, yet at the very moment of his ascension, a counter-revolution in taste, fomented by the American poets Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot, and their Irish colleague W. B. Yeats, were spreading modernism all over the critical map.And even though modernism has lost its iron grip over the popular imagination, the tide has not turned back to the days when a versifier like Sassoon is once again on top of the heap.He was talented, he was tormented, he went to bed with the handsomest men in the world, but his writing isn't all that.Too bad.Still, the book is a fine one and will give you a wonderful sense of period detail--of several periods--in British history since World War I. ... Read more

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Though overshadowed by others, Rupert Brooke's gifts as a poet were palpable; Siegfried Sassoon is known as a talented and prolific writer and poet. Learn much more about both poets with this edition of Bloom's Major Poets, which includes critical analyses and biographies of each writer.

This series is edited by Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities, Yale University; Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Professor of English, New York University Graduate School. History’s greatest poets are covered in one series with expert analysis by Harold Bloom and other critics. These texts offer a wealth of information on the poets and their works that are most commonly read in high schools, colleges, and universities. ... Read more

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Sassoon's fame as a novelist and autobiographer, and the success of his posthumously published Diaries, have somewhat obscured his achievement as a poet. Apart from the famous War Poems of 1919, which firmly established his reputation, he published eight volumes of verse during his lifetime. This collected edition represents his own choice of the poems he wished to preserve. It was first published in 1947 and subsequently enlarged to include the late poems in Sequences.
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Without a title index, it is a nightmare to find the poem you are looking for
The poems are grouped into categories under headings like "Counter Attack and Other Poems" or "Picture Show," but there is no alphabetical index of the poem titles. Since there are several hundred poems in this book, it is a nightmare to have to scan the entire table of contents (a 13 page list of titles) to try and find any given poem that you are looking for. ... Read more

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Though Siegfried Sassoon would argue the point throughout his life, most critics regard his war poetry, written during World War I, as the best of his writings. Like many of his artistic contemporaries, Sassoon embraced the "Great War for Civilization" with great fervor, and it was this passion that he brought to his earliest writings about the war. "Absolution," his first war poem, published in 1915, summed up his feelings: "fighting for our freedom, we are free."

Fighting on the frontlines, Sassoon soon came to the conviction that his war for civilization was anything but civilized. And thus his writings took on a new tone, courageously denouncing a conflict that was no longer about "defense and liberation" but was for "aggression and conquest." Through primary documents and extensive research, the current work provides critical analyses of Sassoon's war poetry. Detailed examinations of each of the so-called trench poems show how the poet and his poetry were transformed through his wartime experiences and give the rationale for the critical consensus that the Sassoon canon is among the most significant in the literature of modern warfare. ... Read more

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Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967), soldier, poet, and witness to a century of war, is an icon of the twentieth century; Jean Moorcroft Wilson is the leading authority on him. In this two-volume biography, she offers her definitive analysis of his life and works. The first critically acclaimed volume, covering Sassoon's life up until the end of the Great War, offers rich material on his poetry, his patriotism, and his anti-war stance. In volume two, Moorcroft Wilson reveals the truth of Sassoon's life after the armistice, when most people thought he was dead; the story includes a series of love affairs with such larger-than-life characters as Queen Victoria's great-grandson, Prince Phillip of Hesse, the flamboyant Ivor Novello, and the exotic and bejeweled Stephen Tennant. But this was also the period of Sassoon's close friendships with the greatest literary figures of the age, including Hardy, Beerbohm, E.M. Forster, and T.E. Lawrence. br Written with the cooperation of Siegfried Sassoon's family and friends, and with access to a mass of private and unpublished material, poems, diaries, letters, and photographs, this meticulously researched biography will be the standard work on Sassoon's life and legacy.REVIEW: 'Thoroughly absorbing."." (John Gross, The Sunday Telegraph)REVIEW: 'A story in which the roots are as interesting as the core ...invaluable to historians of the period."." ( Andrew Motion, The Times (London))REVIEW: 'A necessary and engrossing piece of work."." (Neil Powell, Times Literary Supplement)AUTHORBIO: Jean Moorcroft Wilson is a lecturer in English at London University. Her previous books include biographies of Isaac Rosenberg and Charles Hamilton Sorley, as well as William Watson and Virginia Woolf. She is married to Virginia Woolf's nephew, with whom she runs a publishing house.Amazon.com Review
This biography appears in the midst of a small Sassoon revival. Although not the sprightliest of writers, Jean Moorcroft Wilson gives a comprehensive and well-rounded impression of Sassoon, drawing on much new material, including both sides of his correspondence with T.E. Lawrence. "Unlike the many writers who lead sedentary lives," Wilson notes, "[Sassoon] was a man of action caught up in the bloodiest conflict in history." In the early 1920s, still glowing from the success of his poems of the First World War, Sassoon had imagined he would write a "Madame Bovary dealing with sexual inversion." But the poet who patrolled no man's land at night and whose initially romantic verses gradually came to encompass all the horrors of trench warfare could not find the courage to declare his love for men. One of the benefits of this late biography, as Wilson points out, is that she can now write openly of what Sassoon could not. --Regina Marler ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Engrossing
I'm ashamed to admit I'm not much of a biography reader. I can actually count on one hand the number of bio's I've completed and they have all been rather fluffy. After reading Pat Barker's wonderful WWI trilogy I was moved to find out more about Sassoon and discovered this book through a library search. I was a bit daunted by its length but have managed to read almost all of it in a couple of weeks. It reads quite easily and has actually at times left me reluctant to put it down. I am inspired to read biographies of Dr.Rivers, Robert Ross, and Robert Graves. I have also begun a better appreciation of poetry in general. Ms.Wilson writes on the assumption that her readers have knowledge of the technical aspects of poetry which I definitely lack. But she can be forgiven that. I am looking forward to reading Sassoon's memoirs and fiction. I will definitely read other installments of this fascinating biography.

Criticism or Biography
Ms Wilson needs to make up her mind whether to write a book of Literary Criticism or a biography.The book suffers from too much critical analysis of Sassoon's poetry and not enough about his life.Either he was an extremely boring and prosaic poet or Ms. Wilson needs to delve deeper into his intellectual and emotional development - really his cricket exploits and his hunting prowess does not lend anything to the very essence of his life.Ms. Wilson's prose is turgid and repetitive. An extremely disappointing work.

Splendid biography of the great war poet, hero and sportsman
The biography is artfully crafted with an entertaining balance between story and documentation. I found the level of detail fascinating and not at all constraining, very much like enjoying following brushstrokes in an impressionist landscape. The book broadened and deepened my appreciation of the man, the times, the War and the literary and cultural environment of the first two decades of 20th century Britain.

If Ms Wilson follows with further volumes of Sassoons biography, count me in as an enthusiastic reader!

A much needed biography
I was stunned several years ago to realize there was no modern biography of Sassoon so I was really looking forward to this book and in the end I was really pleased with it.It is perhaps a little too detailed(descriptions of the personalities of Sassoon's schoolmasters, etc.) andshe occasionally jumps around chronologically but Wilson does bring Sassoonto life.Rather than emphasizing his sexuality she puts it into contextand she follows his emotional development through his poetry.She alsodoes an excellent job sorting out the confusion of wartime events.I'mlooking forward to the next volume of this biography and I'd like to readher bio of Charles Hamilton Sorley, another war poet. ... Read more

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Fron inside jacket
Siegfried Sassoon was almost 28 and he enlisted on 3 August 1914. Till then, after education at Marlborough and Clare College, Cambridge, he had lived at home, hunting and playing cricket in Kent and Sussex, and writing agreeably derivative poems which he had privately printed in very small additions. It was the terrible impact of the Western front that turned him from a versifier into a poet.
These diaries, written In tiny notebooks, sometimes in pencil, often by the light of a solitary candle in a dugout or billet, provided the material for his first three pros books, Memoirs of a foxhunting man, Memoirs of an infantry officer and Sherston's progress-books which, along with his war poems, established his fame.
The correspondence between the diaries and the published books is a close one: but in the books a thin veil of fiction is drawn over the events described-names are altered, events heightened. Here, instead, our rock, immediate reports on events as they happened: and included in the diaries are many poems which Sassoon eventually thought worthy of publication only in a periodical or not at all.
The form and unforgettable picture of an appalling time I one of Its greatest recorders.

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Dust jacket notes: "In this unique, profusely illustrated volume, Paul Fussell has compiled key selections from one of the most moving pieces of English literature to emerge from the devastation of World War I: Siegfried Sassoon's great trilogy The Memoirs of George Sherston. A fictionalized account of Sassoon's own early life and wartime experience, the books constituting this trilogy - Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, and Sherston's Progress - form a gripping coming-of-age chronicle. 'The story he tells,' Fussell writes in his introduction, 'is that of a shy, awkward, extremely limited young country gentleman acquainted only with hunting and cricket and golf who learns about the greater adult world the hardest way - perceiving and absorbing the details of its most shocking war. The irony is that Sherston is removed from the aimlessness of his rural life not by, say, a career in the City, which before the war might have been thought the appropriate antidote to idleness; he's removed from it by an alternative quite needlessly excessive, the hell of the trenches.' This is the first version of the Memoirs to be illustrated with photographs, works of art, and documents from its own period. Evoking both the pastoral serenity of Sassoon's boyhood and the brutal reality of trench warfare, these pictures strikingly enhance the text and help make the reader an intimate party to the appalling drop from innocence to experience occasioned by the Great War. Selections from Sassoon's poetry, diaries, and letters, as well as Fussell's introduction and connective commentary, further enrich this haunting book." ... Read more