Wilfred Owen was a poet of the First World War. He was killed just before the Armistice and the completion of the book of poetry he was working on. His collected poems were published in 1920 by his friend Siegfried Sassoon.
These elegies are to this generation in no sense consolatory.
They may be to the next generation. All a poet can do is warn.
Wilfred Owen. Preface to posthumously collected Poems, 1920
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Read Pat Barker's Regeneration Trilogy to appreciate what the writers and poets who found themselves in the trenches during WW1 confronted during the war and how it affected them. It provides an insight to that generation now often referred to as England's "doomed youth.
Owen's colleague Siegfried Sassoon has also written a trilogy set at this time. They are the largely autobiographical Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man (1928), Memoirs of an Infantry Officer (1930) and Sherston's Progress (1933). These books graphically speak of what men faced in the trenches and how many of them found themselves being treated for "shell-shock" and other mental problems that were a result of their experiences in France.
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