Not So Hidden Agendas: Wilfred Owen And His Early Editors

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the
magazine she edited, and was preparing to publish more. It was then that
Sassoon became involved. Sitwell, in a letter dated 3 October 1919, wrote
to Susan Owen (Wilfred's mother) and told her,

I wrote to Captain Sassoon, to ask him if he could
help me about them. He came to see me; and told me
it would have been your son's wish that (Sassoon)
should see to the publication of the poems, because
they were such friends. In the circumstances I could do
nothing but offer to hand them over to him (Sitwell: 20).

Then in a letter from late January 1920, Sitwell tells Susan Owen that
Sassoon

has suddenly gone off to America, leaving all you (sic)
son's manuscripts with me to get ready for the printers
by February 1st. Captain Sassoon has done nothing in
the way of preparing them. All he has done in the
matter is to arrange with Chatto and Windus to publish
them (23).

Despite Sassoon's ...

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War. Thus, in Sassoon's mind,
Sitwell could not introduce Wilfred Owen to the world.
Edmund Blunden's 1931 edition was intended to add the critical and
biographical apparatus that was absent from Sassoon's edition. In his
introduction, Blunden writes that the

sense of his (Owen's) promise and achievement has
deepened since 1920, and his former editor (Sassoon)
has been conspicuous among those who have urged the
preparation of a new and enlarged volume of Owen's
poems, with such biographical notice as can and
should be prefixed to them (Blunden 3).

Edmund Blunden was well aware of Sassoon's motives when he published his
own ...

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