Biography of Siegfried Sassoon

Biography of Siegfried Sassoon
Biography of Siegfried Sassoon
• Name: Sigfried Loraine Sassoon.
• Born: 8 September 1886, Mattfield, Kent, England.
• Father: Alfred Ezra Sassoon.
• Mother: Theresa Thorncroft.
• Wife / Husband: Hester Gatty.

Early life of Siegfried Sassoon:

        Siegfried Loraine Sassoon, CBE, MC was an English poet, writer and soldier. Decorated for bravery on the Western Front, he became one of the leading poets of the First World War. His poem described the horrors of both trenches and satirized the patriotic satire of those who, in Sassoon’s view, were responsible for a war-mongering war. Sassoon became a focal point of discontent within the armed forces during his 1917 “Soldier Declaration” admission to a military psychiatric hospital against continuing the war; This resulted in a friendship with Wilfred Owen, who was greatly influenced by him.
        Siegfried Sassoon was born to a Jewish father and an Anglo-Catholic mother, and was raised in a neo-Gothic mansion in Mattfield, Kent under the name of “Wearley” (its creator, Harrison Wear). His father, Alfred Ezra Sassoon (1861–1895), son of Sassoon David Sassoon, was a member of the wealthy Baghdadi Jewish Sassoon business family. To marry outside the faith, Alfred was estranged.
        Siegfried’s mother, Theresa, belonged to the Thornscroft family, the sculptor responsible for many famous sculptures in London — her brother was Sir Hamo Thorncroft. Sigfried had no German ancestry in the family; Wagner’s love of opera led to his mother’s name being Sigfred. His middle name, Loraine, was the surname of a clergyman with whom he was friendly.
        In the summer of 1916, Sassoon was sent to England to recover from fever. He went back to the front, but was wounded in April 1917 and returned home. The meeting with several prominent pacifists, including Bertrand Russell, reinforced their growing disenchantment with the war, and in June 1917 wrote a letter that appeared in the Times stating that the war was deliberate and unnecessarily prolonged by the government Was being done from.
As a vigilant war hero and published poet, it created public outrage. It was only his friend and fellow poet, Robert Graves, who prevented him from being court-martialed to convince the authorities that Sassoon gave him shell-shocked. He was sent to Craiglehart War Hospital in Edinburgh for treatment. Here he met, and was very impressed, Wilfred Owen.
        Both returned to the front where Owen died in 1918. The Sassoons were stationed in Palestine and then returned to France, where they were again wounded, spending the rest of the war in England. Many of his war poems were published in ‘The Old Huntsman’ (1917) and ‘Counter-Attack’ (1918).
        After the war, Sassoon joined Labor Party politics, lectured on pacifism, and continued writing. His most successful works of this period were his autobiographical novel, The Memoir of George Sherston. In these, he gave a thinly-fictitious account, describing the development of his pacifist sentiments, in contrast to his nostalgic memories of country life, in addition to his name, of war experiences.
        Some have said that Sassoon’s best work is his prose, especially the first two Sherston novels. Fox’s Hunting Man’s memoir was described by a critic for the Springfield Republican as “a novel of utterly refreshing and delightful material”, and Bookman’s Robert Litterell called it “a singular and a strangely beautiful book.” is.