Death and the Downs: The Poetry of Charles Hamilton Sorley

by Charles Hamilton Sorley, Larry K. Uffelman (Contributor), Brett Rutherford (Editor)

Charles Hamilton Sorley's poetic career was cut short when he was killed by a sniper's bullet in the Battle of Loos in 1915. He was 20 years old. Robert Graves called Sorley one of the three important poets killed in World War I. Although Sorley's war-related poems continue to appear in many anthologies, his collected poems have been unavailable for many decades. Sorley's nature poems about the Wiltshire landscape, and his thoughtful poems and letters, engaging him with classical and Biblical texts, Goethe, Ibsen, Jefferies, Masefield, Hardy and other writers, show a young poet of discernment and promise. Sorley's war poems are skeptical of the folly of war and refute the war fever of his era. This annotated edition was prepared to help today's reader navigate the cultural terrain of Britain during World War I. Footnotes include unfamiliar terms, place names, historic references, classical and Biblical allusions. Additional materials include biographical notes, an annotated checklist of critical reception of Sorley's writing, juvenilia, and selected letters.

180 pages, Paperback

First published August 2, 2010

About the author

Though his creative output was cut tragically short Charles Hamilton Sorely is among the most acclaimed of the Great War Poets. Born in Aberdeen, Scotland he was educated first at Marlborough College, and then briefly at the University of Jena. It was there his studies were interrupted in August, 1914 by the outbreak of the First World War. After leaving Germany he enlisted in the Suffolk Regiment and was deployed to the Western Front as a lieutenant May, 1915. He was promoted to captain three months later and during the Battle of Loos was felled by a sniper's bullet. His final sonnet: "When You See Millions of the Mouthless Dead" was discovered in his kit after his death, and was published posthumously with his other completed work.

Marlborough and Other Poems was published posthumously in January 1916 and immediately became a critical success, with six editions printed that year. His Collected Letters, edited by his parents, were published in 1919.

Poet Laureate John Masefield considered him the greatest poetical loss of the war. Robert Graves wrote a poem in tribute to him entitled: "Sorely's Weather." In 1986 Sorley was commemorated along with 15 other poets of the Great War by a plaque bearing his name in Westminster Abbey.

Reviews

[☄ · Rating 5 out of 5]

next morning, a brilliant july day, i went round to pick up intelligence and met [sorley] on trench patrol. he had just come from breakfasting and was dressed in summer get-up; gum boots, breeches, shirt-sleeves, sambrown belt and pistol. he had a bandage round his head, but only a very slight scratch from a fragment of bomb. he was walking along, reading from his german pocket edition of faust. he told me the whole story of the raid: rather sorry that his plans had been let down just when they might have been so successful; but he took it all in his happy careless fashion.

that's our charlie in a nutshell. god, he was the very best of them 💔