Rare Sassoon manuscript added to IWM Collections
The original manuscript of ‘The General’, complete with Sassoon's crossings out © Imperial War Museum
A rare manuscript by First World War poet Siegfried Sassoon has been purchased by IWM. The autographed draft version of the anti-war poem ‘The General’ was bought at auction for nearly £4,000.
Siegfried Sassoon was one of the most famous of the First World War poets. Born in Kent on 8 September 1886, he joined the Army the day before war was declared in 1914. He fought bravely on the Western Front and earned a Military Cross.
This highly significant work was written by Sassoon while he was in Denmark Hill Hospital in April 1917. It was first published in his second collection of war poems, Counter Attack, in 1919.
The draft shows most of the re-workings that appear in the final version, although the last line as published reads ‘But he did for them both by his plan of attack’.
“I have seen and endured the suffering of the troops, and I can no longer be a party to prolong these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust” Siegfried Sassoon, July 1917
Siegfried Sassoon whilst serving with the Royal Welch Fusiliers (IWM Photo Q101780)
‘The General’ is one of the most famous of Sassoon’s poems. It was written while he was questioning the validity of the war following the death in action of one of his close friends, David Cuthbert Thomas.
Sassoon’s anti-war message is made clear by the satirical nature of the poem, highlighting his opposition to what he saw as the incompetence of army command. The ‘cheery old card’ has since been identified as General Reginald Pinney, who Sassoon condemns for having a detachment from the realities of life at the fighting front.
Listen to Siegfried Sassoon reading ‘The General’ in a 1962 recording:
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