Wilfred Owen (1893 - 1918)


A selective bibliography of open access internet articles on Wilfred Owen, favoring signed articles by recognized scholars, articles published in reviewed sources, and web sites that adhere to the MLA Guidelines for Authors of Web Sites


main page | 20th century poetry | 20th century authors, alphabetical | 19th century authors | literature of WWI


Literary Criticism

Cyr, Marc D. "Formal subversion in Wilfred Owen's 'Hospital Barge.'" Essay uses Owen's best known poem, "Dulce et Decorum Est" as groundwork for discussing his lesser known "Hospital Barge." In Style, Spring, 1994

Hibberd, Dominic. "Beauty blasted," On war poetry and Wilfred Owen as an anti-war poet, and a review of Dominic Hibberd's Wilfred Owen: A New Biography Review by Alexandra Mullen in The New Criterion, Feb. 2003

Hibberd, Dominic. (removed) A review of Wilfred Owen: A New Biography by Dominic Hibberd. Reviewer Nigel Jones writes "Reading Owen -- his excellent letters and poems -- has contributed hugely to our contemporary picture of the Great War as a meaningless mass slaughter of innocent "lads" by the desiccated boys of the Old Brigade. If this is a distortion of history, as modern military historians complain, it is also the view of the war that has become our truth." In New Statesman, Sept 2, 2002

Hodgkin, Marian. "The physical and mental scars of World War One as portrayed in poems by W. Owen and R. Graves." Robert Graves Archive

Najarian, James. "'Greater Love': Wilfred Owen, Keats, and a Tradition of Desire." Article discuss Owen's homosexuality and his relationship to John Keats, literary criticism, in Twentieth Century Literature, Spring, 2001

Shumaker, Richard. "The Great War and Recent Writing." Short summaries and evaluations of critical studies on authors of the WWI period. published in the journal Focus on Robert Graves and his Contemporaries, vol. II, 4


Introduction, overview

Wilfred Owen: The pity of war. A 1920 review of Owen's poems, includes a brief discussion of "Strange Meeting." The review notes "The twenty-three poems of this collection are the fruit of not quite two years' active service, less than half of it in the field. But they are enough to rank him among the very few war poets whose work has more than a passing value." Published in the (UK) Guardian, by "C.P."

Wilfred Owen: The greatest ever war poet? Light reading from the BBC, 4/20/05

The Wilfred Owen Association presents an Owen timeline, photos of his home and of war locations, links to texts of the poems, and brief commentaries on several poems by Kenneth Simcox, including Anthem for Doomed Youth, Dulce et Decorum est, and others

The Wilfred Owen Multimedia Digital Archive, a virtual seminar from Oxford Univ., contains links to the text of Owen's poems and to bibliographic detail of an unclear nature

A list of discussion questions for Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum est," from Gerald Richman at Suffolk Univ

Sonnets of World War One places Wilfred Owen's sonnets in the context of other sonnets by WWI poets

A short biography of Wilfred Owen by grad student Michele Fry

A biographical introduction to Wilfred Owen from the World Socialist Web Site

A brief biography of Wilfred Owen and an analysis of "Disabled," part of the award winning online seminar on the poetry of World War I from Oxford University

An article about the editions of Wilfred Owen's works following his death, by WWI enthusiast Michael Duffy

(removed) "Can today's poets seize the moment as their great predecessors did during the First World War and the fighting in Vietnam?" New Statesman, Feb 17, 2003 by Jason Cowley


main page | 20th century poetry | 20th century authors, alphabetical | 19th century authors | literature of WWI

1998-2008 by Donna Jan Pridmore