Pages 144-165 Summary

The book's first appendix consists of a biography of Owen written by Edmund Blunden in 1931. In the opening paragraph, Blunden writes that many of Owen's poems were destroyed when he sent a number of them to his mother with orders to burn them. However, much of Owen's work that remains was organized by his fellow poet Siegfried Sassoon. Blunden covers several of the same incidents in Owen's early life as Lewis, but Blunden adds that Owen's father took him to visit France twice when Owen was fourteen and sixteen.

Owen's primary literary inspiration in his youth is John Keats, but Owen desires to find another great poet to read. Among Owen's early works, Blunden most admires "Isabella", which is a poetic reworking of Hans Christian Andersen's story "The Little Mermaid".

When Owen enlists in the military, he seems to simultaneously see...