Artists Rifles : The Artist’s Rifles had begun as a Volunteer Corps for artists. Its founders included Lord Leighton and Millais. Their special war time role was to function as a training unit for officers.
Baudelaire : Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) was a poet and critic who, along with Mallarmé and Verlaine, was considered as ‘decadent’. He was addicted to opium, and contracted syphilis early in his life.
Berlitz : The Berlitz Language School in Bordeaux was run as a franchise by Maurice Aumont, who also had franchises in Nantes and Angers. Owen taught by the Berlitz Direct Method, which did away with grammar books, and insisted on both student and teacher speaking English at all times.
Birkenhead Institute : The Birkenhead Institute was founded in 1889 by a local philanthropist, George Atkin, who established the school as a commercial company with shareholders and directors, on the principle that parents should take responsibility for the education of their own children. Its motto was ‘Doctor in se semper divitias habet’, ‘A learned man always has riches in himself’.
Bollingen : The Bollingen Prize for Poetry was established by Paul Mellon in 1948, named after Carl Jung’s house in Switzerland. It is awarded every 2 years.
Browning : Robert Browning (1812-1889) eloped with Elizabeth Barrett, also a poet, to Italy in 1846. His best known works are probably the Pied Piper from Hamelin and Home Thoughts from Abroad.
Confucius (551-479BC) was a Chinese moral and political philosopher.
Doolittle : Hilda Doolittle (1886-1961) met Pound in 1901, and they became engaged in 1905, but she was also attracted to women, and in 1910 started a relationship with Frances Josepha Gregg. In 1911 she moved to London, where Pound introduced her to London literary circles.
Douglas : Major Clifford Hugh Douglas was a Scottish engineer, who proposed simplistic economic ideas to correct what he saw as fundamental problems in the free market system. His ideas had strong appeal, particularly during the depression of the 1930’s.
Eliot : Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965) was encouraged in his poetry by Pound, who made suggestions for corrections to some of his early work, which Eliot incorporated into his finished poems. He was also on the committee which awarded Pound the Bollingen Prize in 1949.
Fenellosa : Ernest Fenellosa (1853-1908) was a Harvard University Professor who taught at the Tokyo Imperial University in Japan. He encouraged the Japanese to look to their own arts and culture for inspiration, at a time when the Japanese themselves were looking abroad.
Ford : Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939) was a novelist and the grandson of the Pre Raphaelite painter Ford Madox Brown. He was the founder of both the English Review and the Transatlantic Review, publishing works by such writers as Hemingway, Joyce and Pound.
Hamilton College was founded in 1793 as the Hamilton-Oneida Academy by Samuel Kirkland, a missionary to the Oneida Indians. It was chartered in 1812 as Hamilton College.
Hulme : Thomas Ernest Hulme (1883-1917) was a poet and critic who pursued and defined modernist principles. He was killed in action in the First World War.
Imagist : a movement originating around 1912 which advocated succinct verse of dry clarity, and centred around Ezra Pound, Amy Lowell, Hilda Doolittle, Richard Aldington and Thomas Hulme. The movement influenced the work of T.S.Eliot and D.H.Lawrence.
Keats : John Keats (1795-1821) was one of the foremost Romantic poets of the early 19th century.
Mussolini : Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) began his political life before WWI as a pacifist and socialist, but by 1921, when he entered parliament, he was leader of the Fasci de Combattimento, a right wing group. He set about terrorising his former socialist colleagues with armed groups of his henchmen, and in 1922 was invited to form a government. He proceeded to introduce strict censorship and electoral reform, so that in 1925/6 he was able to eliminate all other political parties and assume dictatorial powers. The press, which he controlled, began to build up the legend ‘Il Duce’, the man who was always right, and who could solve all problems of economics and politics.
Odysseus (Ulysses) was Homer’s hero, who spent many years sailing the Mediterranean in his attempt to return to his island home of Ithaca after the Siege of Troy.
This Preface was found, in an unfinished condition, among Wilfred Owen's papers.
Pre Raphaelites : a group of painters, which included Rossetti, Millais, Burne Jones and Holman Hunt, and which was formed around 1850. They advocated a return to the simple painterly values, which they ascribed to artists before the High Renaissance (before Raphael).
Rudge : Olga Rudge (1895-1996) was born in Ohio, and met Pound in 1916, at which time she was a young violinist. They shared an interest in music, which led them to a Turin library where they found scores of violin concertos by Antonio Vivaldi. They subsequently helped to launch the Vivaldi revival of the 1930’s. After Pound’s incarceration, she campaigned for his release, and oversaw the publication of his works. She had one daughter, Mary, by him.
Sassoon : Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967) is known for his starkly realistic war poems, which express contempt for war leaders and patriotic cant, but compassion for his comrades in arms. He arranged the publication of Owen’s poems in 1920.
Shrewsbury Technical : Owen joined the Pupil Teacher Centre as a probationer, a system which had been used to provide teachers to educate children of elementary school age for more than 50 years.
Tailhade : Laurent Tailhade was 60 at the time Owen met him. Tailhade had been a committed anarchist, losing an eye in a bomb blast, and injuring his hand fighting a duel with Maurice Barrès, a leader of right wing opinion. In 1901 he had been committed to prison for 6 months for advocating the assassination of the Czar and the entire Russian Government and clergy. He presented Owen with a copy of Flaubert’s La Tentation de St Antoine and Renan’s Souvenirs d’Enfance et de Jeunesse.
Verlaine : Paul Verlaine (1844-1896) was a French ‘Decadent’ poet who believed it was the role of poetry to preserve intense, unique moments. He had a tempestuous affair with Arthur Rimbaud, once spending 18 months in jail after attempting to shoot him. Though recognised as France’s leading poet, he spent long periods in public hospitals and living in slums. He informed Gide at one time that he was working on a series of masturbatory poems. In his later years he spent what royalties he earned from his poetry on two middle aged prostitutes with whom he lived alternately.
Vorticist : a movement which grew out of Cubism and Futurism in around 1914, celebrating the modern and the male.
Williams : William Carlos
Williams (1883-1963) qualified as a doctor before taking up
writing. He wrote stories, plays and autobiography as well as poems.
Yeats : William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) was an Irish poet and dramatist who spent a large part of his time in London. In his early style, he was influenced by the Pre
Raphaelites, but his later work became more spare. He was awarded the nobel prize for literature in 1923.