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the experience of reading in Britain, from 1450 to 1945...

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Siegfried Sassoon

  

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Siegfried Sassoon : [war poems]

'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

  

Siegfried Sassoon : Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man

[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

  

Siegfried Sassoon : 

'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

  

Siegfried Sassoon : [poetry]

'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

  

Siegfried Sassoon : Letter to Philip Morrell regarding his defence of his work against John Middleton Murry's review of Siegfried Sassoon, Counter-attack, and Other Poems, in The Nation 13 July 1918

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      

  

Siegfried Sassoon : unknown

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

  

Siegfried Sassoon : War Poems

'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

  

Siegfried Loraine Sassoon : [poems]

'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

  

Siegfried Sassoon : Memoirs of an Infantry Officer

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

  

Siegfried Sassoon : The Memoirs of an Infantry Officer

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

  

Siegfried Sassoon : The Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man

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

  

Siegfried Sassoon : [poems]

'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

  

Siegfried Sassoon : To Any Dead Officer (Who Left School for the Army in 1914)

‘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

  

Siegfried Sassoon : The Old Century

'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

  

Siegfried Sassoon : Counter-Attack and Other Poems

'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

  

Siegfried Sassoon : The Old Huntsman and other Poems

‘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

  

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