In his draft Preface, Wilfred Owen includes his well-known statement 'My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity'.

All of his important poems were written in just over a year, and Dulce et Decorum Est, S.I.W., Futility and Anthem for Doomed Youth still have an astonishing power to move the reader. Owen pointed out that 'All a poet can do today is to warn. That is why all true Poets must be truthful'. His warning was based on his acute observation of the soldiers with whom he served on the Western Front, and his poems reflect the horror and the waste of the First World War.

This volume contains all Owen's best-known poems, only four of which were published in his lifetime. He was killed a week before the Armistice in November 1918.