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 …
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Citation: Baldick, Chris. "Siegfried Sassoon". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 26 September 2013 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4919, accessed 25 November 2024.]
