Bloomsbury Poetry Classics are selections from the work of some of our greatest poets. The series is aimed at the general reader rather than the specialist and carries no critical or explanatory apparatus. This can be found elsewhere. In the series the poems introduce themselves, on an uncluttered page and in a format that is both attractive and convenient. The selections have been made by the distinguished poet, critic and biographer Ian Hamilton. Wilfred Owen was born in 1893, the son of a Shropshire railway-worker. He enlisted for army service in 1915, was commissioned and sent to the front. At first conventionally patriotic, he was soon reporting home on the most execrable sights on earth. Wounded on the Somme he was invalided to Craiglockheart Hospital near Edinburgh, where he met Siegfried Sassoon. Sassoon vigorously criticized his early work (Owen had been writing verse since childhood) and encouraged him in the belief that poets should tell the truth about the conduct of the war. In 1918, Owen returned to France, and won the Military Cross for bravery. He was killed just a week before the Armistice, aged 24.