'Growing up in a family that read newspapers only for sport and scandal, Vernon Scannell knew all the great prize fighters by age thirteen, "but I could not have named the Prime Minister of the day..." The history and geography he was taught at school were never related to contemporary events. Remarkably, Scannell had read widely about the last war: the poetry of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, Edmund Blunden's "Undertones of War", and Robert Graves's "Goodbye to All That". The Penguin edition of "A Farewell to Arms" so overwhelmed him that he tried to write his own Great War novel in a Hemingway style. But none of this translated into any awareness that another war might be on the way'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Vernon Scannell Print: Book
[List of books read during 1944]:
'The Specialist; All This and Heaven Too; Antony; Uncle Tom's Cabin; Roper's Row; Tom Brown's Schooldays; Life's a Circus; The Keys of the Kingdom; Two Survived; Hamlet; King's Nurse, Beggar's Nurse; The Snow Goose; Gerald; Early Stages; Cross Creek; Footnotes to the Ballet; The Great Ship; Hungry Hill; Hiawatha; Captain Blood; Scaramouche; Heartbreak House; Fortune's Fool; Fifth Form at St Dominic's; Cold Comfort Farm; The Lost King; The count of Monte Cristo; Diary of a Provincial Lady; Frenchman's Creek; Song of Bernadette; Romeo and Juliet; Rebecca; The Surgeon's Destiny; The Killer and the Slain; Anna; King Solomon's Mines; The Black Moth; Have His Carcase; Peacock Pie; Alice in Wonderland; The Citadel; Good Companions; Our Hearts were Young and Gay; Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man; The Healing Knife; First Year Out; Saint Joan; Stars Look Down; Bridge of San Luis Rey; Rogue Herries; Caesar and Cleopatra; Xmas at Cold Comfort Farm; Dark Lady of the Sonnets; The Velvet Deer; Leaves from a Surgeon's Case Book; A Christmas Carol; Craft of Comedy; As You Like It; Lottie Dundass; Plays of John Galsworthy; Provincial Lady in America; She Shanties; Peter Abelard; Actor, Soldier, Poet; The Best of Lamb; Some Essay of Elia; Poems, Plays etc; The White Cliffs; Three Men in a Boat; Confessions of an Opium Eater; In Search of England; Wuthering Heights; Pericles, Prince of Tyre; Poems of Contemporary Women; Crime at the Club; Quality Street; Villette; Major Barbara; Pygmalion; You Never Can Tell; King John; Doctor's Dilemma'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Hilary Spalding Print: Book
'Through her old friendship with Stephen Tennant, Rosamond became devoted to his lover, Siegfried Sassoon, whose work she much admired'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Rosamond Lehmann Print: Book
'The fresh-sounding work of the war generation, which began to appear in the late 1920s and early 1930s, provided him with important models. Huxley, Wells and Aldington (especially "Death of a Hero") were rapidly digested; his poetic models were Edith Sitwell, Aldington, Nichols, Sassoon and Graves (in the cheap Benn's Sixpenny Poets editions), to be followed by the more lasting influences of Eliot and D.H. Lawrence...He read an essay by Lawrence in which he showed how England treated its writers. That, he said, made him decide "to swim against the current".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Lawrence Durrell Print: Book
29 July: 'I'm paralysed by the task of describing a week end at Garsington. I suppose we
spoke some million words between us [...] There was Gertler; Shearman & Dallas for tea;
Brett, Ottoline, 3 children & Philip. The string which united everything together was Philip's
attack on Murry in The Nation for his review of Sassoon [...] to prove his case Philip read
Murry's article, his letter, & his letter to Murry, three times over, so I thought, emphasising
his points, & lifting his finger to make us attend. And there was Sassoon's letter of gratitude
too. I think Ott. was a little bored.'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Morrell
Thursday 22 September 1938: 'I was just getting into the old, very old, rhythm of regular reading, first this book then that [...] bowls 5 to 6.30: then Madame de Sevigne; get dinner 7.30 [...] read Siegfried Sassoon; & so to bed at 11.30 or so.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
'Later in my teens, on a first visit to London, I bought for one-and-six in the Charing Cross Road, a red-covered copy of "The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon". it was my first clear view of my father's world of 1914-18, and I went on to read Graves, Blunden, Owen'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Causley Print: Book
'Read "An Anthology of War Poems", introduced by Edmund Blunden. Owen's poetry stands well above all the others - his "Strange Meeting" is worth all the others put together - or nearly so. Branford's sonnets are conspicuous and Sassoon's work distinctive, but Owen has not only Branford's "high seriousness" and Sasoon's objectivity but also a sure craftsmanship - he is always the artist in full control of his medium. Beside his work, Sassoon's sounds almost hysterical and Blunden's slightly artificial. After laying down this book I realised for the first time that, notwithstanding the large company of our war poets, our really fine war poems are very few in number.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Soutar Print: Book
A very fine book indeed, recently published, is Siegfried Sassoon’s 'Memoirs of an Infantry Officer'. I thought that I could never tolerate another war book, but this one, after the first 30 or 40 pages is really extremely distinguished. It has style, wit, beauty and truthfulness.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
When you have read 'The Virgin and the Gipsy' you might get the volume of stories called 'The Woman who Rode Away' and read the title-story. After that 'The Rainbow'—if you can get it. It was suppressed here by the police and I have no copy. Some unprincipled friend has stolen it from me.
I am delighted that you enjoyed 'Evan Harrington'. . . .
I agree with you that 'Memoirs of an Infantry Officer' is an even better book than 'Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
When you have read 'The Virgin and the Gipsy' you might get the volume of stories called 'The Woman who Rode Away' and read the title-story. After that 'The Rainbow'—if you can get it. It was suppressed here by the police and I have no copy. Some unprincipled friend has stolen it from me.
I am delighted that you enjoyed 'Evan Harrington'. . . .
I agree with you that 'Memoirs of an Infantry Officer' is an even better book than 'Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
'The Club then listened to a variety of readings from modern poets as follows:
A Rawlings Extracts from "The Art of Poetry"
T.C. Eliott from Chesterton's "Lepanto"
Mrs Evans some verses by Colin D. B. Ellis
R. H. Robson from J. C. Squires "Birds"
D. Brain from Noyes' "Torch Bearers"
C. I. Evans from Thos Hardy
G. Burrow poems by his brother
F. E. Pollard from Siegfried Sassoon
Mrs Pollard from W. Watson's "Lakeland"
C. E. Stansfield from Rupert Brooke
A. Rawlings from E. V. Lucas & Lang Jones'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Pollard Print: Book
‘I had to thrust aside my “Cambridge Magazine” with Siegfried Sassoon’s splendid war on the war in it. ’
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edmund Blunden Print: Serial / periodical
'His reading in 1938 and 1939 had been mainly of memoirs and biographies: Boswell, Greville, Logan Pearsall Smith's Unforgotten Years, Siegfried Sassoon's The Old Century, Somerset Maugham's The Summing-Up ("a very honest confession of faith").'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: John Buchan Print: Book
'Received a parcel from Elsie containing tobacco (most welcome), papers and a little book of war poems called [italics] Counter-attack [end italics] by Siegfried Sassoon. Very good and very outspoken, revealing things as they actually are, not as they are represented by the daily press. They will do old Glasspoole's heart good when he reads them.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Albert John Martin Print: Book
‘I am going to send you "The Old Huntsman" as a festive gift … “The Death
Bed” is the finest poem. I told [Sassoon] my opinion. It is his own. The poem is
coming out in the Georgian Anthology.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfred Owen Print: Book