WILFRED OWEN AND THE GEORGIANS

Abstract

THE facile distinction, so popular among sixth-formers who have 'done the war poets', between Rupert Brooke, the rhetorical idealist, and Wilfred Owen, who told the truth, is a crude reflection of a wider critical contrast that has often been made between the Georgians and Owen. A comparison, however, may be more helpful than a contrast; the term 'Georgian' includes better poetry than the moonlit, week-end verse once so derided by the Modernists, and it was a term which Owen was proud to apply to himself. There is no need here to become entangled in arguments about the name and nature of 'Georgianism'; for our present purposes, 'the Georgians' may be defined simply as those poets who were reasonably substantial contributors to Edward Marsh's anthology, Georgian Poetry. The group includes some poets who were already established when the first volume was published in I912, such as John Masefield or the publisher himself, Harold Monro; some who were less well known and more closely associated with Marsh, such as W. W. Gibson or Rupert Brooke; and some, including Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon, whose appearance in the anthology was a major event in their early careers. The dominant influence among the younger Georgians was undoubtedly that of Brooke: 'We all look up to him as to our elder brother and have immense admiration for his work from any standpoint, especially his technique, on which we all build'-so Graves assured Marsh as late as June I9I8.1 In January I918, Owen included himself among the younger members of the group by using the phrase 'We Georgians'; he was never a contributor to the anthology but his connection with the Georgians was much closer than is often recognized. His first encounter with the work of a future Georgian was entirely fortuitous. He had taken up a post as lay assistant to the Vicar of Dunsden in October I9I I; in the following month, browsing in a Reading bookshop, he