Britten wrote several compositions in the USA including "Sinfonia da Requiem" (1940) and his "First String Quartet" (1941). The following year he was reading about the poet George Crabbe who came from Suffolk, the same part of England where Britten had grown up. Britten suddenly became homesick. He realized that he could not work and be himself in a foreign country. So he returned with Pears to England.