Siegfried Sassoon

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#nationalpoetryday

Siegfried Sassoon found great inspiration at the Fitzwilliam during the Great War.
While stationed in Cambridge in 1915, he met the Museum Director, Sydney Cockerell, and later recalled returning from an evening with Cockerell,
‘to my camp bed @pembroke1347 in a trance of stimulation after having handled manuscripts of D.G. Rossetti, William Morris and Francis Thompson …
almost a living contact with the Pre-Raphaelites whom I have worshipped since my dreaming adolescence.’
Siegfried Sassoon gave his Autograph manuscript of Fifty Poems, to the Fitzwilliam in 1955.
Sassoon was among sixteen Great War poets commemorated in Westminster Abbey's Poet's Corner.
His inscription was written by friend and fellow War poet Wilfred Owen.
It reads: "My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity."
Glyn Warren Philpot RA (1884 –1937) Siegfried Sassoon.
Oil on canvas, 1917.

Autograph manuscript of Fifty Poems, 1924 Siegfried Sassoon 1886-1967
Presented by Siegfried Sassoon in 1955

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