OWEN, Wilfred; Edmund BLUNDEN (editor). The Poems of Wilfred Owen: A New Edition, Including Many Pieces Now First Published, and Notices of His Life and Work, by Edmund Blunden. London: Chatto & Windus. 1931. [with:] COHEN, Joseph, Owen Agonistes. [Priva…

Uncovering the ‘Conspiracy of Silence’ Surrounding Owen’s Homosexuality

OWEN, Wilfred; Edmund BLUNDEN (editor). The Poems of Wilfred Owen: A New Edition, Including Many Pieces Now First Published, and Notices of His Life and Work, by Edmund Blunden. London: Chatto & Windus. 1931. [with:] COHEN, Joseph, Owen Agonistes. [Privately printed offprint from:] English Literature in Transition vol. VIII, no. 5, December 1965. S.l.: s.n. [Not before 1965.]

Cohen: 8vo. Pale blue printed card wrappers, stapled as issued; pp. 24. With accompanying envelope addressed to Cohen in typescript ‘from Professor Blunden’, typescript letter from Blunden to Cohen (175 x 135 mm, single leaf, pp. [2]) dated 12 January 1967 and signed ‘E. Blunden’, and facsimile typescript letter from Cohen to Blunden dated 12 December 1966 (280 x 215 mm, see below).

Owen: 8vo. Original brown buckram over bevelled boards, spine lettered in gilt, top-edge gilt, tail- and fore-edges untrimmed, partly unopened; pp. [ii], vii, [1 (blank)], 135, [1 (blank)]; photographic portrait frontispiece with tissue guard; light spotting to endpapers and prelims, spine ends slightly rubbed; a very good copy.

No. 11 of 160 ‘special edition’ copies (of which 150 were for sale) of the first edition of Edmund Blunden’s landmark edition of Wilfred Owen’s poems, this copy signed by Blunden at the foot of his biography of the poet; offered with Blunden’s copy of the scarce offprint of Joseph Cohen’s controversial pamphlet, Owen Agonistes, with Cohen’s letter to Blunden on Owen’s homosexuality and Blunden’s dismissive reply.

Blunden’s extended edition of Owen’s poems appeared eleven years after the slimmer volume edited by Seigfried Sassoon and Edith Sitwell in 1920. A war veteran and distinguished poet himself, Blunden was urged to edit the volume by Sassoon, who was never pleased with the earlier edition. ‘[A] more experienced and exacting editor’ (Stallworthy), Blunden added 37 poems to the 23 in the 1920 edition, as well as a memoir of Owen and notes to the poems. Like Sassoon and Sitwell, he reprints Owen’s short sketch for a preface, adding the poet’s own table of contents (‘with its perplexities’).

The edition ‘helped to consolidate Owen’s reputation and elevate him to the iconic status he was to hold for poets and readers of poetry in the 1930s and after’ (Stallworthy); it was the volume that endeared Owen to Auden, and later Larkin. Blunden has signed this copy at the foot of his memoir and to Owen’s preface.

Joseph Cohen, the owner of this copy, scholar of First World War poetry, and biographer of Isaac Rosenberg, was a professor at Tulane University. In 1965, Cohen published the influential article ‘Owen Agonistes’ English Literature in Transition, 1965, later issued in the pamphlet offered here. The essay, which sought to uncover what Cohen describes as a ‘conspiracy’ of silence regarding Owen’s homosexuality, was greeted with some hostility among existing Owen scholars. A reaction against Sassoon’s claim in the introduction to the 1920 edition of Owen’s poems that ‘[a]ll that was strongest in Wilfred Owen survives in his poems; any superficial impressions of his personality, any records of his conversation, behaviour, or appearance, would be irrelevant and unseemly’, the essay broke new ground and has been influential for later scholars. The signed copy of Owen Agonistes is accompanied by a facsimile copy Cohen’s letter to Edmund Blunden, sent with a copy of the pamphlet (presumably this copy), along with Blunden’s original typed, hand-signed reply to Cohen, on Blunden’s printed writing paper and complete with the stamped envelope. The short, but fascinating letter is at once heartfelt and angry, while remaining civil.

‘Your kindness in sending me the inscribed pamphlet on W. Owen I much appreciate, though as you wrote in your letter I might not enjoy your thesis. You seem (p. 4 and elsewhere) to describe me as a deliberate writer of untruth about Owen. The word “conspiracy” is not a pleasant one in such connections, if any. Your conclusion on p. 24 connects me with a “windy and empty legend” etc. I can only say that I wrote, long ago, by request, quite simply about Owen, from all see sources I had, and had no wish to do anything but record him and edit his poems. From his father, mother, sister and brother I had no evidence (why should they think as you say about his private life)? Having been in the army myself I can follow what you say, but I believe Wilfred merely gave his life, and was given a decoration for gallantry, in 1918. [&c].’

Owen Agonistes: OCLC finds eight copies in the US (UT Austin, UC Davis, Kansas State, Historic New Orleans Collection, Ohio, Tulsa, and Texas A&M), and only one in the UK (Edinburgh Napier).

White, p. 13; Kirkpatrick B47b. See Stallworthy, Owen: A Biography (1974).

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