The Poetical Works

Description

No poetry has touched readers' hearts more deeply than the soldier poets of the First World War. Published to commemorate the centenary of 1914, this stunning set of books, with specially commissioned covers by leading print makers, is an essential gathering of our most beloved war poets introduced by leading poets and biographers of our present day. The reputation of Rupert Brooke has survived many changes of literary fashion since his death in the Aegean in 1915, aged twenty-eight. This standard edition of his poems was edited and arranged by his great friend Geoffrey Keynes. It includes a considerable number of early pieces, among them two of his longest poems, 'The Pyramids' and 'The Bastille'.

Rupert Brooke was born in Warwickshire in 1887, and studied at King's College, Cambridge. As part of his recovery from the depression and instability which led to his break from the Bloomsbury group, Brooke toured Canada and the United States. In 1915, after joining the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, Brooke sailed for Gallipoli with the British Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, but on the way contracted sepsis from an infected mosquito bite and died aboard a French hospital ship moored off the island of Skyros in the Aegean.