Collection Summary
Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin
Owen, Wilfred, 1893-1918
Wilfred Owen Collection
1898-1982
Manuscript Collection MS-03127
3 document boxes (1.26 linear feet)
The Wilfred Owen Collection in the
Ransom Center spans the years 1898 to 1982 and comprises Owen's letters to his
family and others, several works by Owen, Edmund Blunden, and Siegfried Sassoon,
along with works and correspondence concerning his life and career.
English
Biographical Sketch
Wilfred Edward Salter Owen was born to Tom and Susan Owen at Oswestry, Shropshire, on
18 March 1893, the eldest of four children. In 1897, the family left Oswestry for
Birkenhead and eventually Shrewsbury as Tom Owen held successive supervisory
positions with the railway. Between 1901 and 1910, Wilfred was educated at
Birkenhead Institute and Shrewsbury Technical School, but in his 1911 matriculation
exam for the University of London he failed to achieve first-class honors. Without
the honors a scholarship became an impossibility, and family support was
insufficient otherwise.
Owen spent the years between 1911 and 1915 in a variety of educational and vocational
pursuits: he served as a lay assistant to an Anglican vicar; studied privately and
at the University College, Reading; taught English at the Berlitz school in
Bordeaux; and tutored the sons of a French family. This period also marks the
beginning of his first systematic efforts to write poetry.
In September 1915, thirteen months into the Great War, Wilfred Owen returned to
England and enlisted in the army. After military training he was in June 1916
commissioned a second lieutenant in the Manchester Regiment. Further postings and
additional training followed and in early 1917 he was sent to France, where he was
wounded in March and again in April.
Diagnosed with shell-shock, Owen was sent to the Craiglockhart War Hospital outside
Edinburgh, arriving in June 1917. The hospital was, during the war years, a facility
specializing in the treatment of officers suffering from combat-related psychiatric
disorders. Not long after arriving Wilfred Owen was made editor of
The Hydra, the patients' magazine at the hospital. His
poem Song of songs, appearing in the September
1917 issue, was Owen's first published work.
In August, Siegfried Sassoon, a war poet known to Owen by reputation, arrived at
Craiglockhart. Owen quickly introduced himself to Sassoon and with the encouragement
and assistance of the older man soon began writing starker and less derivative
poetry based on his war experiences. In late 1917 and into 1918, Sassoon introduced
Owen to writers and artists in his circle.
Light duty in the fall of 1917 and in the early months of 1918 allowed Owen a measure
of leisure time to produce the majority of the poems on which his reputation is
based.
Anthem for doomed youth, Dulce et decorum est, Strange meeting, Parable, and Futility were all written in the months between the fall of 1917 and late
spring 1918.
After Sassoon left the front with a near-fatal head wound, Wilfred Owen returned to
active duty in France in July 1918 with the Second Manchesters. On October 2, at
Joncourt, Owen replaced his wounded company commander under fire and helped repel a
German attack. For this he was ultimately rewarded with the Military Cross.
On 4 November 1918--one week before the Armistice--as he was leading his platoon in
crossing the Sambre Canal near the village of Ors, Owen was killed on the canal
bank. As the church bells rang in Shrewsbury on Armistice Day the War Department
telegram announcing his death was delivered to his parents.
Sources:
Owen, Wilfred.
Collected Letters. London: Oxford
University Press, 1967.
Stallworthy, Jon.
Owen, Wilfred Edward Salter
(1893-1918). Oxford Dictionary of
National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004 (accessed July
2010).
_____________.
Wilfred Owen. London: Oxford University
Press and Chatto and Windus, 1974.
Index Terms
People
Blunden, Edmund, 1896-1974
Cohen, Joseph, 1926-
Isherwood, Christopher, 1904-1986
Sassoon, Siegfried,
1886-1967
Subjects
English poetry -- 20th century
Poets, English -- 20th century
War poetry, English
World War, 1914-1918 -- Great Britain --
Literature and the war
Document Types
Poems
Scope and Contents
The Wilfred Owen Collection in the Ransom Center spans the years 1898 to 1982 and
comprises Owen's letters to his family and others, several works by Owen, Edmund
Blunden, and Siegfried Sassoon, along with works and correspondence concerning his
life and career. The collection embraces three series: I. Correspondence and Works,
1898-1918; II. Materials about Wilfred Owen, 1900-1982; and III. Prose and Poetry by
Others, 1898-1955.
The core of the Wilfred Owen Collection was brought together in 1954 by Joseph Cohen,
then a member of the English Department at the University of Texas, when he
identified materials in the university's Rare Book Collection related to Owen. Cohen
conducted an active correspondence in the years 1954-1956 seeking information and
additional material concerning Wilfred Owen with the intention of creating a Wilfred
Owen War Poetry Collection.
The Correspondence and Works Series runs to nearly two boxes and is the heart of the
Ransom Center's Wilfred Owen Collection. It includes the originals of nearly all the
673 letters by Owen published in his
Collected
Letters. The letters are to Wilfred's mother Susan and other members of the
family save for one to Nellie Bulman and several to Alex Paton. Of these only the
Paton letters are in facsimile. Many of the letters to the Owen family have the
deletions made by Harold Owen and noted in the Collected
Letters. The original works by Owen comprise nine poems present as
manuscripts in facsimile or as translations.
Series II. Materials about Wilfred Owen, 1900-1982, includes the scripts of four BBC
programs produced between 1947 and 1955, along with transcriptions of a 1953
discussion between Joseph Cohen and Dennis Welland annotated by Wilfred's brother
Harold Owen. A significant group of letters to Cohen from institutions and
individuals having an interest in Wilfred Owen also appear in the series.
The letters from Ladislav Cejp and George Derbyshire contain enclosures concerning,
respectively, Owen's work and the organization of the Manchester Regiment in the
Great War. Filed with Cohen's correspondence are several pieces of third-party
correspondence, including facsimiles of a Susan Owen letter to Alex Paton and one
from Gordon Bottomley to Isaac Rosenberg. Also present are letters dated between
1929 and 1932 from Martin Armstrong to "Mr. Wilson" and John P. Coghlan. Armstrong's
connection to Wilfred Owen is slight: he, like Owen, served briefly in the Artists
Rifles and was also a poet but otherwise their lives were unconnected.
Series III. Prose and Poetry by Others, 1898-1955, includes several works in
manuscript by Edmund Blunden and Siegfried Sassoon. Blunden's poems
The Only Answer and Thames Gulls are both fair copies by the author, the former signed by
him. Sassoon's Concert Party, corrected and
signed, may be the gift offered by Percy Muir of Elkin Mathews to the University of
Texas in his August 1954 letter to Joseph Cohen.
The corrected carbon typescript of chapters 6 through 15 of
Siegfried's Journey, along with three galley proofs, were the gift of
B. W. Huebsch of the Viking Press, and his accompanying letter of June 1955 is
present with the typescript in photostatic facsimile. The final Sassoon item is
The red poetry book, handwritten by the
youthful poet at Christmas 1898 for his uncle Hamo Thornycroft. It is accompanied by
a card signed "your loving nepew[sic] Siegfried Sassoon."
Joseph Cohen's
Wilfred Owen War Poetry Collection: a
Bibliographical Checklist of 1955, along with his 1955 draft survey of
Owen-related materials then held by the Ransom Center, completes the series.
Acquisition:
Purchase, 1970 (R5180); Gifts, 1985 (G2476), 1995 (G10178)
Access:
Open for research
Processed by:
Bob Taylor, 2010
The Ransom Center's Vertical File retains a two volume collection of works by and
commentary on Wilfred Owen comprising Robert A. Christoforides's Fragments of Peace
and War and related materials.
Other collections in the Ransom Center that contain material related to Owen include
those of Patric Dickinson and Dylan Thomas. Other archives possessing Wilfred Owen
material include Columbia University and the English Faculty Library at the
University of Oxford.
Container List
Series I. Correspondence and Works, 1898-1918
Subseries A. Correspondence, 1898-1918
1.1
Bulman, Mary Ellen, 1917
1.2
Owen, Colin, 1909-1918
1.3
Owen, Harold, 1908-1917
1.4
Owen, Mary, 1903-1918
Owen, Susan
1.5
1898-1911
1.6
1912
1.7
1913
1.8
1914
2.1
1915
2.2
1916
2.3
1917
2.4
1918
2.5
Owen, Tom, 1913-1917
2.6
Paton, Alex, 1906-1913
Subseries B . Works, 1914-1918
2.7
Nine poems (manuscripts in facsimile and translations)
Series II. Materials about Wilfred Owen, 1900-1982
2.8
Correspondence to Joseph Cohen and third party correspondence,
1916-1957
Works about Wilfred Owen, 1947-1982
3.1
Allen, Walter E. Wilfred
Owen (BBC radio production, 1950)
3.2
Cohen, Joseph. Discussion with D. S. R. Welland re Wilfred
Owen, with marginal comments by Harold Owen, 1953-55
3.3
Dickinson, Patric. Wilfred
Owen (BBC radio production, 1953)
3.4
Fuller, Roy. Wilfred Owen
(BBC radio production, 1947)
3.5
Sassoon, Siegfried. Wilfred
Owen (BBC radio production, 1948)
3.6
Brief biographical and critical pieces (typescript,
photocopy, offprint, 1900-1982)
Series III. Prose and Poetry by Others, 1898-1955
3.7
Blunden, Edmund. The only
answer and Thames gulls (two
handwritten poems)
3.8
Cohen, Joseph. The Wilfred Owen War Poetry
Collection: A Bibliographical Checklist, 1955 (two copies;
laid in is Cohen's handwritten and typescript List of materials [1955?])
Sassoon, Siegfried
3.9
Concert party
(handwritten poem, with revisions, Kantara, 1918)
3.10
The red poetry bookfor Uncle Hamo, Xmas 1898
(handwritten)
3.11
Siegfried's Journey (carbon
typescript, with author's corrections; 177 p. comprising chapters
6-15 together with three leaves of galley proofs)
Index of Correspondents
- Armstrong, Martin, 1882-1974--2.8
- Artists Rifles Association (P. B. Cowell)--2.8
- Berlitz School of Languages (Bordeaux, France) (A.
Lowrie)--2.8
- Birmingham Reference Library (F. J. Patrick, J. C.
Sharp)--2.8
- Bottomley, Gordon, 1874-1948--2.8
- British Broadcasting Corporation (Lydia
Crowther-Smith)--2.8
- British Council (R. H. Milner)--2.8
- Bulman, Mary Blanche--2.8
- Cejp, Ladislav--2.8
- Chatto & Windus (Firm) (P. Raymond)--2.8
- Cohen, Joseph, 1926- --2.8 (with Birmingham Reference
Library), 3.2, 3.8
- Derbyshire, George--2.8
- Duthoy, Roland--2.8
- Edinburgh (Scotland). Public Library (C. S. Minto)--2.8
- Fuller, Roy, 1912-1991--2.8
- Gray, L. T. M. (Leonard T. M.)--2.8
- Great Britain. Commonwealth War Graves Commission (W. P.
L. Arnott)--2.8
- Great Britain. War Office. Records Center--2.8
- Huebsch, B. W. (Benjamin W.), 1876-1964 (The Viking
Press)--3.11
- Isherwood, Christopher, 1904-1986--2.8
- Kay, Walter--2.8
- Keir, Stella M. F.--2.8
- Loiseau, Jean, 1899- (Université de Bordeaux
Faculté des lettres)--2.8
- Muir, Percy H. (Percy Horace), 1894-1979--2.8
- Murry, John Middleton, 1889-1957--2.8
- National Library of Scotland. Dept. of Printed Books
(David M. Lloyd)--2.8
- Nicholson, Frank Carr, 1875- --2.8
- Owen, Susan--2.8
- Paton, Alex S.--2.8
- Sassoon, Siegfried, 1886-1967--3.10
- Shapiro, Karl Jay, 1913-2000 (Poetry)--2.8
-
Spear, Hilda D.--2.8
- University of London. Library (J. H. P. Pafford)--2.8
- Venables, Fred W.--2.8
- Viking Press (Marshall A. Best)--2.8
- Wynick, Annie--2.8