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The Winter of the World: Poems of the Great War
With over 250 poems from the First World War, this anthology delivers an extraordinary record of the passionate feelings and terrible experiences of the war to end all wars.
400 pages, Paperback
First published March 28, 2008
About the author
Dominic Hibberd
11 booksThe son of a director of Coutts bank, John William Dominic Hibberd was born in Guildford on November 3 1941. From Rugby (where he was bullied) he won an exhibition to King’s College, Cambridge, and after graduating took a PhD at Exeter University.
He became the world's leading authority on the life and work of Wilfred Owen. In 1973 he became the fourth editor of Owen's war poems, following Siegfried Sassoon, Edmund Blunden and Cecil Day-Lewis.
He taught English at Manchester Grammar School and Keele and Exeter universities, as well as universities in America and China.
After retiring from teaching in the 1980s he became a full-time writer about the First World War poets. In his first book, Owen the Poet, he showed that much of the language and imagery of Owen’s most famous poems was in place long before Owen experienced the realities of the trenches. In Wilfred Owen: The Last Year (1992) he explored the importance of Owen’s time in hospital .
Other books include Diary of a Dead Officer, a study of the poet Arthur Graeme West, and Harold Monro: Poet of the New Age (2001), an absorbing biography of the poet, idealist, campaigner, alcoholic and homosexual who started Poetry Review and the Poetry Bookshop which, for more than 20 years, was, as Hibberd put it, “the most famous centre for poets in the English-speaking world”. In 2007 he edited (with John Onions) The Winter of the World: Poems of the First World War.
A quiet, courteous man and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Hibberd lived in Oxfordshire with his civil partner, Tom Coulthard, who survives him.
He became the world's leading authority on the life and work of Wilfred Owen. In 1973 he became the fourth editor of Owen's war poems, following Siegfried Sassoon, Edmund Blunden and Cecil Day-Lewis.
He taught English at Manchester Grammar School and Keele and Exeter universities, as well as universities in America and China.
After retiring from teaching in the 1980s he became a full-time writer about the First World War poets. In his first book, Owen the Poet, he showed that much of the language and imagery of Owen’s most famous poems was in place long before Owen experienced the realities of the trenches. In Wilfred Owen: The Last Year (1992) he explored the importance of Owen’s time in hospital .
Other books include Diary of a Dead Officer, a study of the poet Arthur Graeme West, and Harold Monro: Poet of the New Age (2001), an absorbing biography of the poet, idealist, campaigner, alcoholic and homosexual who started Poetry Review and the Poetry Bookshop which, for more than 20 years, was, as Hibberd put it, “the most famous centre for poets in the English-speaking world”. In 2007 he edited (with John Onions) The Winter of the World: Poems of the First World War.
A quiet, courteous man and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Hibberd lived in Oxfordshire with his civil partner, Tom Coulthard, who survives him.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
May 21, 2021
An exceptionally well-balanced collection of poetry from the First World War. Taking its title from a Wilfred Owen poem, The Winter of the World does of course present us with the more well-known poets, such as Owen (killed only one week before the end of the war) and Siegfried Sassoon. But it also has a lot of lesser-known poets, both soldiers and civilians, who certainly deserve to stand alongside their more famous peers.
Organised more-or-less chronologically, the anthology does an excellent job of demonstrating how attitudes changed as the war progressed, both individual poets' attitudes and also the general mood of the times. The Winter of the World also engages in a bit of myth-busting, presenting the works which inform our contemporary dominant impression of the war (the solemn, 'never forget' mood embodied by such works as John McCrae's 'In Flanders Fields') but balancing them out with other poems - some jingoistic (particularly in the early part of the war), some satirical, some resentful, some nihilistic or despairing, some hopeful of a better world arising out of the bloodshed and destruction.
I do respect our society's dominant view of World War One - the solemn remembrance, the poppy-wearing, the lost youth - especially as I read this book on Armistice Day, but I was grateful that this book showed that this was just one interpretation of the war. By highlighting the diversity in experience, outlook and, indeed, talent of the war poets, rather than spouting solemn, well-meaning clichés and relying on the works of Owen and Sassoon to propel their book, the editors of The Winter of the World have provided perhaps the most comprehensive and educational anthology of war poetry out there today.
Organised more-or-less chronologically, the anthology does an excellent job of demonstrating how attitudes changed as the war progressed, both individual poets' attitudes and also the general mood of the times. The Winter of the World also engages in a bit of myth-busting, presenting the works which inform our contemporary dominant impression of the war (the solemn, 'never forget' mood embodied by such works as John McCrae's 'In Flanders Fields') but balancing them out with other poems - some jingoistic (particularly in the early part of the war), some satirical, some resentful, some nihilistic or despairing, some hopeful of a better world arising out of the bloodshed and destruction.
I do respect our society's dominant view of World War One - the solemn remembrance, the poppy-wearing, the lost youth - especially as I read this book on Armistice Day, but I was grateful that this book showed that this was just one interpretation of the war. By highlighting the diversity in experience, outlook and, indeed, talent of the war poets, rather than spouting solemn, well-meaning clichés and relying on the works of Owen and Sassoon to propel their book, the editors of The Winter of the World have provided perhaps the most comprehensive and educational anthology of war poetry out there today.
March 5, 2017
When I bought this, I’d been toying with buying a WWI poetry anthology for a while, and this was just a flat-out cover-purchase, because I was tossing up between this and the Penguin Book of WWI Poetry, and this one just looked nicer. I am not much of a poetry reader, being quite finicky, but WWI occurred at the nexus of classicism and modernist poetry, and therefore melds a certain amount of structure, rhyme and meter with stripped-back language and an attempt at realism. Therefore, other than skipping some of the longer and more florid pieces, I found a lot in this book that I liked.
One thing I liked a lot about this book was that it was organised in chronological order, rather than by theme. I have no trouble grouping things by theme or tone in my head, but I’m terrible at contextualising them, so setting the poems out by roughly when they were written really worked for me. Each year had a brief summary of the major events of the war, which were supplemented by biographical details of the poets where this was useful or interesting.
It was interesting, too, to see the way the voices of the poets evolved from (to highlight the usual suspects) Rupert Brooke to Siegfried Sassoon and Ivor Gurney to Wilfred Owen. In particular, it highlighted the way the protest poets were responding to the patriotic, triumphalist poems of the civilian poets early in the war. The editors clearly had a narrative they were developing, and I am not sure how much of this narrative was real and how much was Hibberd and Onion imposing their order on a wide and chaotic field. And, of course, any anthology is going to irritate someone by excluding their personal favourite poems; I’m no exception to that – Robert Graves, for example, was very sparsely represented compared to other poets of similar prolificacy.
One issue was that the typesetting seemed as if it had been rushed (I have the paperback edition). Ordinarily I wouldn’t comment on design elements, but I think with poetry it does make a difference how it sits on the page, and it would have been better if each poem started at the top of its own page. I don’t think stanzas broke across pages, but poems would start halfway down, and sometimes the note text got widowed on the top of the page following the poem. In general, it seemed there hadn’t been a lot of thought put into the way the poems were presented visually.
Poetry is one type of primary source for trying to understand the experience of the war, and there were some truly gorgeous poems in this anthology. It is worth picking up and skimming through to find your favourites, then stopping to admire each one. Although it’s terribly unoriginal of me, and Owen didn’t necessarily speak for his contemporaries, I still think that on its own merits, “Anthem for Doomed Youth” is one of the most beautiful pieces of writing in English.
One thing I liked a lot about this book was that it was organised in chronological order, rather than by theme. I have no trouble grouping things by theme or tone in my head, but I’m terrible at contextualising them, so setting the poems out by roughly when they were written really worked for me. Each year had a brief summary of the major events of the war, which were supplemented by biographical details of the poets where this was useful or interesting.
It was interesting, too, to see the way the voices of the poets evolved from (to highlight the usual suspects) Rupert Brooke to Siegfried Sassoon and Ivor Gurney to Wilfred Owen. In particular, it highlighted the way the protest poets were responding to the patriotic, triumphalist poems of the civilian poets early in the war. The editors clearly had a narrative they were developing, and I am not sure how much of this narrative was real and how much was Hibberd and Onion imposing their order on a wide and chaotic field. And, of course, any anthology is going to irritate someone by excluding their personal favourite poems; I’m no exception to that – Robert Graves, for example, was very sparsely represented compared to other poets of similar prolificacy.
One issue was that the typesetting seemed as if it had been rushed (I have the paperback edition). Ordinarily I wouldn’t comment on design elements, but I think with poetry it does make a difference how it sits on the page, and it would have been better if each poem started at the top of its own page. I don’t think stanzas broke across pages, but poems would start halfway down, and sometimes the note text got widowed on the top of the page following the poem. In general, it seemed there hadn’t been a lot of thought put into the way the poems were presented visually.
Poetry is one type of primary source for trying to understand the experience of the war, and there were some truly gorgeous poems in this anthology. It is worth picking up and skimming through to find your favourites, then stopping to admire each one. Although it’s terribly unoriginal of me, and Owen didn’t necessarily speak for his contemporaries, I still think that on its own merits, “Anthem for Doomed Youth” is one of the most beautiful pieces of writing in English.
November 24, 2021
I don't think I am sophisticated enough to "get" poetry. Some of the poems connected with me in one way or another, and together the collection gave me a sense of the First World War and how the soldiers/societies involved felt about it. But, I don't believe that poetry is my favored form of literature.
April 16, 2012
When I bought this, I’d been toying with buying a WWI poetry anthology for a while, and this was just a flat-out cover-purchase, because I was tossing up between this and the Penguin Book of WWI Poetry, and this one just looked nicer. I am not much of a poetry reader, being quite finicky, but WWI occurred at the nexus of classicism and modernist poetry, and therefore melds a certain amount of structure, rhyme and meter with stripped-back language and an attempt at realism. Therefore, other than skipping some of the longer and more florid pieces, I found a lot in this book that I liked.
One thing I liked a lot about this book was that it was organised in chronological order, rather than by theme. I have no trouble grouping things by theme or tone in my head, but I’m terrible at contextualising them, so setting the poems out by roughly when they were written really worked for me. Each year had a brief summary of the major events of the war, which were supplemented by biographical details of the poets where this was useful or interesting.
It was interesting, too, to see the way the voices of the poets evolved from (to highlight the usual suspects) Rupert Brooke to Siegfried Sassoon and Ivor Gurney to Wilfred Owen. In particular, it highlighted the way the protest poets were responding to the patriotic, triumphalist poems of the civilian poets early in the war. The editors clearly had a narrative they were developing, and I am not sure how much of this narrative was real and how much was Hibberd and Onion imposing their order on a wide and chaotic field. And, of course, any anthology is going to irritate someone by excluding their personal favourite poems; I’m no exception to that – Robert Graves, for example, was very sparsely represented compared to other poets of similar prolificacy.
One issue was that the typesetting seemed as if it had been rushed (I have the paperback edition). Ordinarily I wouldn’t comment on design elements, but I think with poetry it does make a difference how it sits on the page, and it would have been better if each poem started at the top of its own page. I don’t think stanzas broke across pages, but poems would start halfway down, and sometimes the note text got widowed on the top of the page following the poem. In general, it seemed there hadn’t been a lot of thought put into the way the poems were presented visually.
Poetry is one type of primary source for trying to understand the experience of the war, and there were some truly gorgeous poems in this anthology. It is worth picking up and skimming through to find your favourites, then stopping to admire each one. Although it’s terribly unoriginal of me, and Owen didn’t necessarily speak for his contemporaries, I still think that on its own merits, “Anthem for Doomed Youth” is one of the most beautiful pieces of writing in English.
One thing I liked a lot about this book was that it was organised in chronological order, rather than by theme. I have no trouble grouping things by theme or tone in my head, but I’m terrible at contextualising them, so setting the poems out by roughly when they were written really worked for me. Each year had a brief summary of the major events of the war, which were supplemented by biographical details of the poets where this was useful or interesting.
It was interesting, too, to see the way the voices of the poets evolved from (to highlight the usual suspects) Rupert Brooke to Siegfried Sassoon and Ivor Gurney to Wilfred Owen. In particular, it highlighted the way the protest poets were responding to the patriotic, triumphalist poems of the civilian poets early in the war. The editors clearly had a narrative they were developing, and I am not sure how much of this narrative was real and how much was Hibberd and Onion imposing their order on a wide and chaotic field. And, of course, any anthology is going to irritate someone by excluding their personal favourite poems; I’m no exception to that – Robert Graves, for example, was very sparsely represented compared to other poets of similar prolificacy.
One issue was that the typesetting seemed as if it had been rushed (I have the paperback edition). Ordinarily I wouldn’t comment on design elements, but I think with poetry it does make a difference how it sits on the page, and it would have been better if each poem started at the top of its own page. I don’t think stanzas broke across pages, but poems would start halfway down, and sometimes the note text got widowed on the top of the page following the poem. In general, it seemed there hadn’t been a lot of thought put into the way the poems were presented visually.
Poetry is one type of primary source for trying to understand the experience of the war, and there were some truly gorgeous poems in this anthology. It is worth picking up and skimming through to find your favourites, then stopping to admire each one. Although it’s terribly unoriginal of me, and Owen didn’t necessarily speak for his contemporaries, I still think that on its own merits, “Anthem for Doomed Youth” is one of the most beautiful pieces of writing in English.
December 14, 2010
This anthology, its notes and its introduction set the War Poets of World War One in a wider context and I find that illuminating. It also includes a considerably larger number of poets, including the women who worked as farm workers and stretcher bearers, as well as a number of older writers who did not have to experience the horrors at first hand.
I liked how the anthology showed the Victorian style of the patriotic poets contrasting the Georgian style of many of the soldier poets, but also revealing that modernism was an influence on writers well before the public was aware of it in the 1920s.
It also demonstrates that there was division within the British people leading up to the declaration of war, but much of the satirical attacks on patriotic poets and the anti war protests dried up in the face of huge public support for the war, at least until after the Somme!
The soldier poets, therefore. were writing within a society where expressing your feelings about the war in verse was nothing extraordinary.
Perhaps the most startling thing was that the horrors of the war were recognised before the whole mess began and that poets were amazingly prophetic.
As well as a bibliography, the book also lists significant websites and organisations like the Wilfred Owen Association.
I liked how the anthology showed the Victorian style of the patriotic poets contrasting the Georgian style of many of the soldier poets, but also revealing that modernism was an influence on writers well before the public was aware of it in the 1920s.
It also demonstrates that there was division within the British people leading up to the declaration of war, but much of the satirical attacks on patriotic poets and the anti war protests dried up in the face of huge public support for the war, at least until after the Somme!
The soldier poets, therefore. were writing within a society where expressing your feelings about the war in verse was nothing extraordinary.
Perhaps the most startling thing was that the horrors of the war were recognised before the whole mess began and that poets were amazingly prophetic.
As well as a bibliography, the book also lists significant websites and organisations like the Wilfred Owen Association.
July 31, 2011
Not really a comprehensive anthology of WWI Poetry, that's not the point. It's more a history of a rapid evolution in poetry, propelled by war. The notes provide a sense of how the world reacted to each poem, how poetry modernised, inspired other poetry or how poems were suppressed. There's a background to each, and this, combined with the chronology, adds to a sense of truth struggling against propaganda. Interestingly a lot of pro-war poetry appears here, interesting to be reminded of that. Without hesitation a five star work.
April 30, 2013
A well chosen selection, with a beautiful cover, and illuminating footnotes.
May 4, 2014
I couldn't put it down. Really got to the heart..
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews