Biography Isaac Rosenberg

Poet Biography

Born in Bristol, England on 25th November 1890 to Russian-Jewish parents, Isaac Rosenberg grew up in the East End of London and became an apprentice engraver until he went to the Slade School to study. An artist and one of the Georgian poets, he was in South Africa when the First World War broke out recuperating from illness, but despite poor health, in 1915 he enlisted as a private in the Army and served in the ranks on the Western Front from 1916 until he was killed in action on April 1st 1918. He was 27 years old.

Isaac Rosenberg, Charles Sorley and Wilfred Owen, were considered to be the three greatest Great War poets, and Rosenberg's poem, "Break of Day in The Trenches" is generally considered to be the greatest poem of the war.