Eleanor Farjeon Now That You Too Essay

Eleanor Farjeon is primarily known for her fantasy and children book writing. She was also a prolific poet and her poetry collection The Little Bookroom (1955) won her the Carnegie Medal and the Hans Christian Andersen medal (Poetry). Later she would go on to receive the American Regina Medal in 1959 (Poetry). Her work with children’s writing was so successful that the Children’s Book Circle in England would create the Farjeon Award which is awarded for outstanding work in children’s literature bears her name (All Poetry). Farjeon was born in London in 1881 eventually moving to Sussex (All Poetry). It was in Sussex that Farjeon developed a close friendship with poet World War I poet Edward Thomas and his wife Helen (Poetry). After Thomas’s death in …show more content…
Like Thomas Farjeon wrote poetry regarding her experience during The Great War, Farjeon was not an active participant in the war but she did maintain correspondence with both Thomas another officer Victor Haslam short installments of her works (Poetry). Farjeon would continue to write and publish until her death in 1965.

Farjeon’s poem “Now That You Too” deals with the torment of having to watch a loved one depart for war with the speaker drinking in every last detail of their final meeting in case it would be their last. The sorrowful love sonnet is written in the Shakespearian style by dividing the sestet into a quatrain and final couplet. The first stanza reflects her love who “must shortly go” (1) bringing the focus to English society during the “bloodshot years” (2) of where an entire generation of young men was lost to the war effort. In the last line of the first stanza the speaker understands the toll on this generation of English