Born into a wealthy Jewish family, sometimes called the “Rothschilds of the East” because the family fortune was made in India, Sassoon lived the leisurely life of a cultivated country gentleman before the World War I, pursuing his two major interests, poetry and fox hunting. His early work, which was privately printed in several slim volumes between 1906 and 1916, is considered minor and imitative, heavily influenced by John Masefield (of whose work The Daffodil Murdereris a parody). Shell-twisted and dismembered, the Germans maintained the violent attitudes in which they had died. The British had mostly been killed by bullets or bombs, so they looked more resigned. But I can remember a pair of hands (nationality unknown) which protruded from ths soaked ashen soil like the roots of a tree turned upside down; one hand seemed to be pointing at the sky with an accusing gesture. Each time I passed the place the protest of those fingers became more expressive of an appeal to God in defiance of those who made the war. Who made the War?” In comparing ‘Memoirs of an Infantry Officer’ to that other great WWI novel, ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’, the title character George Sherston is more detached and reserved than Paul Baumer, the more innocent first person protagonist in Remarque’s book. While Remarque gets the nod as the better story teller, Sassoon is able to masterfully capture the incongruous feelings of despair and boredom on the front lines. Perhaps because he is a poet, Sassoon is not always as consistent in his story-telling but this is offset by the literary gems scattered throughout, such as this one in the midst of the Battle of the Somme "I was huddled up in a little dog-kennel of a dug-out reading Tess of the D’Urbervilles and trying to forget about the shells which were hurrying and hurrooshing overhead." The Old Century and Seven More Years (autobiography), Faber, 1938, Viking, 1939, reprinted with introduction by Michael Thorpe, Faber, 1968. Harold Nicolson wrote in the Daily Express that it was a book "of deep beauty and abiding significance. A book which will, I hope and believe, be read by millions." [3]

Times Literary Supplement, July 11, 1918; June 3, 1926; November 1, 1947; September 18, 1948; January 4, 1957; December 7, 1973.

Sassoon’s critical biography of Victorian novelist and poet George Meredithfound a similarly positive reception. In this volume, he recounted numerous anecdotes about Meredith, portraying him vividly as a person as well as an author: “The reader lays the book down with the feeling that a great author has become one of his close neighbors,” wrote G.F. Whicher in the New York Herald Tribune Weekly Book Review.The critical portions of the book were also praised, though some found the writing careless. But the New Yorkercritic noted Sassoon’s “fresh and lively literary criticism,” and the reviewer for the Times Literary Supplementdeclared that “Mr. Sassoon gives us a poet’s estimate, considered with intensity of insight, skilfully shaped as biography, and written with certainty of style.” You don’t know about me, without you have read a book by the name of ‘The Adventures of Tom Sawyer’. [ 1] Siegfried Sassoon is best remembered for his angry and compassionate poems about World War I, which brought him public and critical acclaim. Avoiding the sentimentality and jingoism of many war poets, Sassoon wrote of the horror and brutality of trench warfare and contemptuously satirized generals, politicians, and churchmen for their incompetence and blind support of the war. He was also well known as a novelist and political commentator. In 1957 he was awarded the Queen’s Medal for Poetry.

Published anonymously) Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man (novel), Faber & Gwyer, 1928, Coward, 1929, new edition, Faber, 1954. This book covers the really interesting period of Sassoon’s life. It’s an effective contrast to the events and settings described in Fox Hunting. I get the feeling that it is closer to being directly autobiographical than the first book of the trilogy, too.Now and again she took me to a children’s party given by one of the gentry: at such functions I was awkward and uncomfortable, and something usually happened which increased my sense of inferiority to the other children, who were better at everything than I was and made no attempt to assist me out of my shyness. I had no friends of my own age. I was strictly forbidden to ‘associate’ with the village boys. And even the sons of the neighbouring farmers were considered ‘unsuitable’– though I was too shy and nervous to speak to them. [ 6]