By the time Owen was killed at the age of 25 at the Battle of Sambre, he had written what are considered to be the most important British poems of WWI. This definitive edition is based on manuscripts of Owen's papers in the British Museum and other archives.

    This is the definitive single-volume edition of Wilfred Owen’s poems, whose death in battle a few days before the Armistice was the most disastrous loss to English letters since Keats. Containing the texts of all the finished poems of Owen’s maturity and twelve important fragments and with extensive notes, it derives from Jon Stallworthy’s monumental edition of The Complete Poems and Fragments and is aimed at the student and general reader alike. ‘Others have shown the disenchantment of war, have unlegended the roselight and romance of it, but none with such compassion for the disenchanted or such sternly just and justly stern judgment on the idyllisers.’ Guardian

    The book has no illustrations or index.

    It has been a pleasure to write it, and now that I have finished I am genuinely sorry that I cannot go further. On the lecture tour I find that people ask me questions, and I have tried in this book to give in detail many things about the quieter side of war that to an audience would seem too tame. I feel that the public want to know how the soldiers live when not in the trenches, for all the time out there is not spent in killing and carnage. As in the case of all men in the trenches, I heard things and stories that especially impressed me, so I have written them as hearsay, not taking to myself credit as their originator.

    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.