When Isaac Rosenberg was killed in action on the Western Front in April 1918, the world lost one of the most striking talents of that ill-fated generation. He differed from Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon -- the two poets with whom he is most often compared -- in that his was a double-faceted gift: he was both poet and painter. His death at the age of twenty-seven was the final tragedy in an existence that had been fraught with anxious striving, unremitting deprivation and unmerited neglect -- neglect which until recently dogged his reputation despite acclaim from a number of eminent critcs. - Jacket flap.