Sassoon, Siegfried Loraine

A manuscript of Fireflies (Georgian Parodies) , 1920 by Siegfried Sassoon.

Siegfried Sassoon was born on 8 September 1886 at Weirleigh, Kent. He was educated at Marlborough College and at Clare College Cambridge. In 1914, Sassoon enlisted as a trooper in the Sussex Yeomanry and a year later he was commissioned in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers. During the First World War, 1914-1918, he served in France and Palestine. While in France, Sassoon wrote a series of poems exposing the horrors of war. In 1919 Sassoon became the first literary editor for the Daily Herald . In 1920 he made a tour of the United States, reading poems and speaking out against the war. Sassoon published his first prose work, Memoirs of a Fox Hunting Man in 1928. He died on 1 September 1967.

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University of London Library, The Sterling library: a catalogue of the printed books and literary manuscripts collected by Sir Louis Sterling and presented by him to the University of London , Cambridge, (1954).

The Lilly Library, Indiana University, USA, holds literary papers; the rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University, New York, USA, has correspondence, literary manuscripts and papers, 1894-1942 (Ref: NUC MS 84-618), and correspondence with Wilfred Edward Salter Owen and his family, 1917-1918 (Ref: NUC MS 84-602); the British Library, London, contains letters and poetical manuscripts, [1906-1930] (Ref: Add MSS 62941-2), correspondence with Sir Sydney Carlyle Cockerell, 1916-1923 (Ref: Add MS 52752), and letters to Sir William Hamo Thornycroft, [1906-1925] (Ref: Add MS 56099); Rutgers University Libraries, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA, hold correspondence, poems and papers, 1908-1966 (Ref: NUC MS 87-710); Cambridge University Library has correspondence, including with Faber and Faber (Ref: Add 8889), letters and poetical manuscripts (Ref: Geoffrey Keynes Collection), miscellaneous correspondence, 1909-1967 (Ref: Add 9375), correspondence with Edward Joseph Dent and manuscript poems, 1915-1918 (Ref: Add MS 7973), and letters to Sir Geoffrey Langdon Keynes, 1933-1963; King's College Modern Archives Centre, Cambridge University, contains letters to Edward Morgan Forster, 1918-1957; the Department of Archives, Photographs, Film and Sound, National Army Museum, London, holds notebooks and miscellaneous papers, 1916-1932 (Ref: 9508-11); the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center Library, University of Texas at Austin, USA, has letters to Edmund Charles Blunden; the Sheffield Archives contain letters to Edward Carpenter, 1911-1918 (Ref: MSS 386); the Imperial War Museum Department of Documents holds letters from Sir Sydney Carlyle Cockerell, 1916-1923, and correspondence, 1914-1936; the National Art Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum, has letters, mainly to Dame Hildelith Cumming, 1960-1975 (Ref: Supplement 1977); the Brotherton Library, Leeds University, contains letters to Sir Edmund William Gosse, 1916-1927, and letters to Philip Gosse, 1933-1954; Southern Illinois University Library, USA, holds letters to Robert Ranke Graves (Ref: NUC MS 77-520); the Bodleian Library, Oxford University, contains letters to Robert Malise Bowyer Nichols with drafts of poems, 1917-1918, 1930 (Ref: MS Eng lett c7), and letters to Edward John Thompson, 1926-1943 (Ref: MSS Eng c5312).

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