'Owen seems to have started reading Swinburne in earnest in 1916. When he returned to the front in 1918, knowing that he would kill and probably be killed, he took volumes of both Shelley and Swinburne with him, but after he had been in action he sent the Shelley back to Shrewsbury, keeping only Swinburne's "Poems and Ballads", the one book of poetry still in his kit at his death'.