Siegfried Sassoon Collection Now Online

I received the following email through my subscription to the World War One literature google group and it revealed some excellent news:





The First World War Poetry Archive is pleased to announce that the Siegfried Sassoon collection is now live at:


http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/collections/sassoon


This draws from collections at Oxford, Cambridge, New York Public Library, and the Harry Ransom Center. The primary focus is on manuscript variants of Sassoon's 'war poetry' contained in the collections 'The Old Huntsman', 'Counter-Attack', and 'Picture Show'.You are free to use the images for educational purposes (see http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/permitteduse.html).


In effect this represents the last collection that will be going live,as part of the project. The funding for this two-year initiative came from the Joint Information Systems Committee as part of their Digitisation Programme.


Please feel free to pass this on,


The First World War Poetry Archive Team

University of Oxford





What this means is that an incredible resource just got even better. I am sure that access to this material will benefit many researchers and anyone with a keen interest in literature, the First World War, or Siegfried Sassoon himself.



It may even save some people the time and money needed for a costly research trip!

Nostalgia

Recently, I submitted a piece of work in which I agreed with the generally perceived opinion that Siegfried Sassoon's autobiographical prose is imbued with a 'nostalgic' and 'melancholic' mourning for a past long lost. Sassoon laments the loss of a pre-War England that can never exist again after the devastation of the First World War.

The point seems an appropriate one to make. Britain and her inhabitants were irrevocably changed by War. Yet, this sense of loss - of nostalgia for a more innocent past - is not unique to those affected by War and makes me wonder whether it is a point worth making at all.

Surely everyone, at some point, experiences a moment of contemplation - a remembrance of things past - where they wish to be back in a time or place they inhabited at an earlier point in their life. I felt it a few days ago.

At The Thermals concert, sipping a beer at the rear of the crowd, I observed three youths (no doubt well intoxicated) dancing and jumping in time with the music, with arms around each other at the front. From my sedate position I watched their energetic appreciation of the music with a little envy. In that moment I was transposed; I remembered what it felt like when I attended concerts in years gone by, and there was sadness.

It passed quickly as these nostalgic thoughts often do (who in their right mind would seriously want a permanent return: the sweat, the hangover, the social awkwardness). It was a lament for a time gone. A time when attending concerts with friends produced an energetic release of pent up frustration (teenage angst, I suppose).

It is not a mourning for the past on a level anywhere near that of those who went through the Great War, but a mourning nonetheless. After all that, it seems a bit too obvious to draw a conclusion that the purpose of Sassoon's autobiographical writing is to mourn for a world now gone. Mental note: more insightful answers are required....

It must be added, I still very much enjoy going to concerts, and The Thermals were excellent....