Siegfried Sassoon, scorched glory

the long version

Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967) is today chiefly remembered for his Great War poetry. His celebrated Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man is a classic of autobiography in fictional form, yet the rest of Sassoon's long literary career and his place within the Georgian movement have not yet received sustained critical attention. Siegfried Sassoon: Scorched Glory is the first survey of the poet's published work since his death and the first to draw on the edited diaries and letters. Taking his lead from Sassoon's declaration that his poetry was his 'real biography', Paul Moeyes traces Sassoon's literary development within the context of his autobiographical writings. We learn how Sassoon's family background and Jewish inheritance, his troubled sexuality, his experience of war - in particular his public opposition to it - his relationship to the Georgian poets and other writers, and his eventual withdrawal to country life shaped his creativity. Throughout his career Sassoon experimented with poetic form, with varying degrees of success, but it was in the Sherston trilogy and his autobiographies that he found his true voice, evoking a bygone age of pastoral contentment and social order rooted in class. Sassoon's status as a war poet has overshadowed his wider achievements and the complex personality behind them. This critical evaluation of Sassoon's work is long overdue and will provide a valuable starting-point for future reappraisals of a writer for whom life and art were fused.