When Wilfred Owen died in 1918 at the age of twenty-five, only five of his poems had been published, yet he was to become one of the most popular poets of the twentieth century. He is now Britain's national poet of the Great War, and his work speaks to many young people more powerfully than any other poetry. Dominic Hibberd's new biography, based on more than thirty years of wide-ranging research, brings new information and reinterpretation to virtually every phase of Owen's life--carefully guarded by family and friends after his death. Mr. Hibberd sheds fresh light on Owen's family background, education, and struggles with religion. That he was gay is fully discussed for the first time. His army training and experiences on the Western Front in World War I are described in vivid detail, using original documents from military archives. Throughout the story the poet steadily develops, from his early devotion to Wordsworth and the Romantics in 1910-1911, through his discovery of the French Decadents in 1914-1915 and his friendship with Siegfried Sassoon in 1917, to the final, superb achievement of his mature 1918 poems. The Great War's greatest poet emerges as a complex, fascinating, and often endearing character, with a strong sense of humor and an intense delight in life.