This book presents a study of two English writers whose initial friendship developed from a chance meeting in the trenches of the Somme to one of the more important symbiotic soldier-poet relationships of the 1920s - Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon. Patrick J. Quinn examines both writers' autobiographical works, scrutinizing the transitions in their poetry, from pre-war jottings through post-war struggles, to find their poetic voices.

This developmental approach provides an opportunity to evaluate much of their poetry that has hitherto been largely ignored, and helps explain why both men turned in the late 1920s to writing autobiographical prose fiction to purge the war and its aftereffects from their lives.

Both Graves and Sassoon achieved their first real poetic successes during the Great War. Linked together as fellow officers and friends, and flushed with the promise of greater poetic achievement ahead, both writers perceived the war initially as a vehicle by which they could rid themselves of Victorian influences and produce startling results as realists.

But as the war continued and both men began to suffer its effects, they realized that their verses had failed to alert a victory-determined British populace to its jingoistic mentality.

By mid-1919 both poets were trying to adjust to civilian status and reorganize their lives after the upheavel of the war: Graves attempted at first to expiate his memories of the Western Front by writing sentimental verse, but dissatisfaction with his marriage and an inability to exorcise his neurasthenic nightmares led him to experiment with psychological self-analysis in his poetry.

Sassoon's response to the war, in contrast, motivated largely by a homoerotic attachment to the enlisted men under his command and a conviction of social injustice, turned him briefly to socialism and social satire for a thematic approach to his poetry in the early 1920s.

In their joint discontent, Sassoon and Graves searched throughout the mid-twenties for personal order and artistic direction. Graves delved into Eastern philosophy and biblical exegesis until, with the arrival of Laura Riding, his domestic and creative life was turned around; from Riding, Graves gained the strength to reject the values imposed upon him by his background and his literary peers.

Similarly, Sassoon struggled to find a poetic cause commensurate with his talents, but his disillusionment with the modern world caused him to turn inward for inspiration. This introspection led Sassoon to a contemplation of his past, through which he was eventually to find the symmetry and positive cultural values that were lacking in the modern world

1. Thus, in their individual searches for creative inspiration, both Graves and Sassoon severed relations with contemporary British society and each turned to his own form of self-imposed exile.