Owen was born the eldest of four children at Plas Wilmot, a house near Oswestry in Shropshire on 18 March 1893 of mixed English and Welsh ancestry. At that time, his parents, Thomas and Susan Owen, lived in a comfortable house owned by his grandfather, but, on his death in 1897, the family was forced to move to lodgings in the back streets of Birkenhead.

Owen was raised as an Anglican of the evangelical school. His early influences included John Keats, and, as with many other writers of the time, the Bible.  He discovered his vocation around 1903 during a holiday spent in Cheshire.

His great friend, the contemporary poet Siegfried Sassoon had a profound effect on Owen's poetic voice, and Owen's most famous poems, Dulce et Decorum Est and Anthem for Doomed Youth, show Sassoon's influence.  Manuscript copies of the poems survive, annotated in Sassoon's handwriting.

Owen's poetry would eventually be more widely acclaimed than that of his mentor. While his use of pararhyme, with its heavy reliance on consonance, was both innovative and in some of his works, quite brilliant, he was not the only poet at the time to utilize these particular techniques. He was, however, one of the first to experiment with it extensively.

Owen is regarded by some as the leading poet of the First World War, known for his war poetry on the horrors of trench and gas warfare.

From the age of nineteen Owen wanted to be a poet and immersed himself in poetry, being especially impressed by Keats and Shelley.

"All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true poet must be truthful."

"The people of England needn't hope. They must agitate." Letter 19 January, 1917, shortly after arriving at the front line in France.

"I am more and more a Christian. . . Suffer dishonour and disgrace, but never resort to arms. Be bullied, be outraged, be killed: but do not kill." Letter to his mother, May 1917.