Next

Wilfred Owen was born in 1893 in the town of Oswestry, located in Shropshire, England. The oldest of four children, Owen had high intellectual ambitions. When he failed to secure a place at university, he began training to become a clergyman. However, disillusionment with the Church of England soon led him to abandon the profession. Sometime later he started anew by traveling to France to work as a teacher. But in September 1915, as World War I swept through Europe, he was forced to return home. He enlisted in the British Army the following month, and a year later he departed for France again, this time as a lieutenant in the Manchester Regiment. Owen’s first-hand experience of trench warfare led to a diagnosis of “shell shock” that landed him in hospital in the summer of 1917. During his recovery, he began to write the body of poetry for which he would soon become famous, including his well-known antiwar poem “Dulce Et Decorum Est.” Despite his growing conviction that the war must end, Owen returned to the trenches in September 1918, and two months later he was killed in action. Only three of his poems were published during his lifetime. The rest appeared in posthumous collections.

Next section Historical Context

Take a Study Break