Portrait of Wilfred Owen

Birthday profile

Wilfred Owen

Wilfred Owen, English soldier and poet (died 1918)

Born
March 18, 1893
Died
November 4, 1918
Zodiac sign
Pisces
Birth year
1893

About Wilfred Owen

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen (18 March 1893 – 4 November 1918) was an English poet and soldier. He was one of the leading poets of the First World War. His war poetry on the horrors of trenches and gas warfare was much influenced by his mentor Siegfried Sassoon and stood in contrast to the public perception of war at the time and to the confidently patriotic verse written by earlier war poets such as Rupert Brooke. Among his best-known works – most of which were published posthumously – are "Dulce et Decorum est", "Insensibility", "Anthem for Doomed Youth", "Futility" and "Strange Meeting". Owen was killed in action on 4 November 1918, a week before the Armistice, at the age of 25. == Early life == Owen was born on 18 March 1893 at Plas Wilmot, a house in Weston Lane, near Oswestry in Shropshire. He was the eldest of Thomas and (Harriett) Susan Owen (née Shaw)'s four children; his siblings were Mary Millard, (William) Harold, and Colin Shaw Owen. At the time of Owen's birth, his parents lived in a comfortable house owned by his grandfather, Edward Shaw. After Edward's death in January 1897, and the house's sale in March, the family lodged in the back streets of Birkenhead. There Thomas Owen temporarily worked in the town employed by a railway company.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

Career and life highlights

Wilfred Owen timeline

  1. Owen discovered his poetic vocation in about 1904 during a holiday spent in Cheshire.
  2. Owen was killed in action on 4 November 1918, a week before the Armistice, at the age of 25.
  3. For his courage and leadership in the Joncourt action, he was awarded the Military Cross, an award he had always sought in order to justify himself as a war poet, but the award was not gazetted until 15 February 1919.

The world when Wilfred Owen was born

Wilfred Owen was born in 1893. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Headlines and milestones

  • Top headlineWorld's Columbian Exposition in Chicago
  • Technology milestoneFirst Ferris wheel debuts at Chicago World's Fair
  • Notable inventionFerris wheel (264 feet tall)
  • World population~1.53B

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderGrover Cleveland
  • U.S. population66.0M

1893 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Wilfred Owen's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure18932026
Population66.0M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Library of Congress, Wikidata. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.