Siegfried Sassoon Biography

One the most iconic figures of the 20th century, Siegfried Sassoon was a famous historian, poet, writer and soldier. He was among the first poets during World War I, whose poetry portrayed the graphic descriptions of the brutal realities of the war. In an era where people were lured by patriotic propaganda and romantic, heroic ideas of war, his poetry conveyed the merciless, inhumane and cold-blooded actualities on the war front. The trademark of all his writings is the details of foul-smelling rotting corpses, distorted limbs, filth, suicide and blood, which served as an effective anti-war stance. This type of writing had a significant impact on the genre of modernist poetry. Some of his well-known poems include, ‘The Old Huntsman’, The Hero’, ‘Aftermath’, ‘I Stood with the Dead’, ‘Trench Duty’ and ‘Repression of War’. Disillusioned with war, he refused to return to duty and strongly condemned it. As the witness to great bloodshed, he wrote a series of semi-autobiographical books viz., ‘Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man’, ‘Memoirs of an Infantry Officer’ and ‘Sherston's Progress’. This series of books came to be known as the ‘Sherston trilogy’. To learn more interesting facts about his personal life, childhood and wartime experiences, scroll down and continue to read this biography.