1. Grant Could Help Acquire Poet's Papers.
- Author
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Itzkoff, Dave
- Subjects
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WAR poetry , *AUTHORS ,BIOGRAPHIES - Abstract
The papers of the poet Siegfried Sassoon are probably headed to Cambridge University thanks to a grant from a British national fund for emergency acquisitions, BBC News reported. On Wednesday the National Heritage Memorial Fund in Britain said that it would give about $900,000 toward the purchase of Sassoon's archives, which include notebooks he kept on the Western Front during World War I, as well as correspondence, poetry books, photographs and love letters to his wife, Hester. Sassoon, who dealt with the human toll of war in poems like ''They'' and ''Suicide in the Trenches,'' volunteered for military service just before Britain entered World War I, and he was a decorated soldier before he refused to return to duty in 1917. In June several authors, including Sebastian Faulks and Sassoon's official biographer, Max Egremont, started a campaign to acquire Sassoon's papers after the death of his son, George, in 2006. With the grant, Cambridge is about $180,000 short of the estate's asking price of nearly $2 million for the archive. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]
- Published
- 2009