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Anthem for Doomed Youth: Soldier poets of the First World War
Edited by Jon Stallworthy (Constable & Robinson, 2002) £14.99
Introduction to the lives and work of 12 poets of World War I, many of whom were killed in action. Produced to accompany an exhibition at the Imperial War Museum. Illustrated with many photographs and original manuscripts.
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Minds at War: The poetry and experience of the First World War
Edited by David Roberts (Saxon Books, 1996) £13.99
Contains 250 poems by 80 poets, plus biographical and social context.
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The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry
Edited by Jon Silkin (Penguin, 1979) £7.99
A selection of poetry including work by Sassoon, Owen, Blunden, Rosenberg, Hardy and Lawrence. Silkin's introduction traces the changing mood of the poets - from patriotism through anger and compassion to an active desire for social change.
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The War Poets: The lives and writings of the 1914-18 war poets
Edited by Robert Giddings (Bloomsbury, 1998) £14.99
Each chapter covers a year of the war, and contains a selection of poems, plus a commentary putting the work of the poets into context. Contemporary paintings by war artists such as Nash and Spencer, cartoons, memorabilia and photographs provide a visual insight that amplifies this record of the war years.
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Calligrammes: Poems of peace and war (1913-1916)
Guillaume Apollinaire (University of California Press, 1992) £15.95
This is Apollinaire's poetic record of his wartime experiences in the French infantry. His experimental concrete poetry influenced the likes of André Breton, Tristan Tzara, Paul Eluard and Louis Aragon.
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The Collected Poems
Rupert Brooke (Picador, 1994). Out of print; may be available from libraries or second-hand bookshops.
Brooke's poems are printed in the order in which they are believed to have been written, allowing readers to trace his development from his early works of 1906-08 to the Great War sonnets of 1914.
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Collected Poems
A E Housman (Penguin, 1995). £8.99
Housman published several poems during the First World War, including 'Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries', written after the 1st Battle of Ypres.
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Collected Poems
Charles Hamilton Sorley (Cecil Woolf, 1985) £9.95
Sorley enlisted in the Suffolk Regiment in 1914 and was killed by a sniper at the Battle of Loos in 1915. A total of 37 complete poems, including 'When You See Millions of the Mouthless Dead', were found in his kit following his death; they proved to be a great success when published posthumously.
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Poems about War
Robert Graves (Cassell Illustrated, 1988). Out of print; may be available from libraries or second-hand bookshops.
Graves excluded his war poetry from his published work in 1927 and it was only in 1988, when his son William brought them together in a new collection, that they became available again to the general public.
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The Poems of Wilfred Owen
edited by Jon Stallworthy (Chatto & Windus, 1990) £6.99
Owen is one of the First World War's best-known poets. He met Siegfried Sassoon (see below) while recovering from shell shock in hospital, and went on to write some of his best verse, including 'Anthem for Doomed Youth' and 'Dulce et Decorum Est'. Sassoon edited and arranged for Owen's poetry to be published following his death in 1918.
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Verses of a VAD
Vera Brittain (Imperial War Museum,1995) £14
Brittain's first volume of poetry includes a poem dedicated to her brother who was killed in action. Her fiancée and several close friends also died during the war. Brittain's wartime experiences are also recounted in her prose memoir Testament of Youth
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The War Poems
Siegfried Sassoon (Faber, 1999) £4.99
Sassoon was posted to the Western Front as an officer with the Royal Welch Fusiliers. He is famous for his satirical anti-war poetry but also wrote three fictional autobiographies: Memoirs of a Foxhunting Man (1928), Memoirs of an Infantry Officer (1930) and Sherston's Progress (1936).
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