Edmund Blunden (1896-1974) was one of the youngest of the war poets, enlisting straight from school to find himself in some of the Western Front's most notorious hot-spots. His prose memoir, written in a rich, allusive vein, full of anecdote and human interest, is unique for its quietauthority and for the potency of its dream-like narrative. Once we accept the archaic conventions and catch the tone - which can be by turns horrifying or hilarious - Undertones of War gradually reveals itself as a masterpiece. It is clear why it has remained in print since it first appeared in1928.This new edition not only offers the original unrevised version of the prose narrative, written at white heat when Blunden was teaching in Japan and had no access to his notes, but provides a great deal of supplementary material never before gathered together. Blunden's "Preliminary" expresses thelifelong compulsion he felt "to go over the ground again" and for half a century he prepared new prefaces, added annotations. All those prefaces and a wide selection of his commentaries are included here - marginalia from friends' first editions, remarks in letters, extracts from later essays, and asubstantial part of his war diary. John Greening has provided a scholarly introduction discussing the bibliographical and historical background, and brings his poet's eye to a much expanded (and more representative) selection of Blunden's war poetry. For the first time we can see the poet Blundenas the major figure he was.Blunden had always hoped for a properly illustrated edition of the work, and kept a folder full of possible pictures. The editor, with the Blunden family's help, has selected some of the best of them to include in this new edition.

This volume continues the recent trend towards expanding definitions of war experience through considering a range of different landscapes and voices. Not all landscapes were comprised of trenches and barbed wire. Voices, supporting or dissenting, were many and varied. Collectively, they combine to offer fresh insights into the multiplicity of war experience, alternate spaces to the familiar tropes of mud and mayhem.

This book draws together for the very first time examples of the 'aesthetic pacifism' practised during the Great War by such celebrated individuals as Virginia Woolf, Siegfried Sassoon and Bertrand Russell. In addition, the book outlines the stories of those less well-known who shared the mind-set of the Bloomsbury Group when it came to facing the first 'total war'. The research for this study took five years, gathering evidence from all the major archives in Great Britain and abroad. This is the first time that such wide-ranging evidence has been placed together in order to paint a complete pi.

The First World War has given rise to a multifaceted cultural production like no other historical event. This handbook surveys British literature and film about the war from 1914 until today. The continuing interest in World War I highlights the interdependence of war experience, the imaginative re-creation of that experience in writing, and individual as well as collective memory. In the first part of the handbook, the major genres of war writing and film are addressed, including of course poetry and the novel, but also the short story; furthermore, it is shown how our conception of the Great War is broadened when looked at from the perspective of gender studies and post-colonial criticism. The chapters in the second part present close readings of important contributions to the literary and filmic representation of World War I in Great Britain. All in all, the contributions demonstrate how the opposing forces of focusing and canon-formation on the one hand, and broadening and revision of the canon on the other, have characterised British literature and culture of the First World War.

A farmer’s daughter, a convent girl, a lover of the Irish countryside, a poet, novelist and short story writer, a journalist, a friend of the English during war and peace, a fighter for justice, a Catholic, but able to see and decry the interference of religion in politics: this is in part Katharine Tynan Hinkson (1859–1931), usually known as Katharine Tynan, who lived in Ireland and England, and wrote through the turbulent times of Irish politics, suffrage, the Great War, and civil war in Ireland. Her background was rural Ireland, her father being a prosperous land-owning farmer. Educated locally and at a convent, she left aged fourteen and spent much time reading and enjoying the countryside, which became a foundation for her poetry and storytelling. She was aware of the politics of Ireland through her politically active father, and she joined the short-lived Ladies’ Land League in 1881 and was a fervent admirer of Charles Stewart Parnell. Her first major literary friendship was with her mentor, the Jesuit Father Matthew Russell, editor of the Irish Monthly, who published much of her work. He introduced Katharine to the Catholic literary couple Wilfrid and Alice Meynell in London in 1884, a visit which formed a deep love and admiration for Alice. The Meynells published much of her poetry in the Weekly Register and Merry England. Katharine made many visits to England and settled in England in 1893 after her marriage to Harry Hinkson, making it her home until returning to Ireland in 1912. After the Great War, she moved between England and Ireland, finally settling in London where she died. Katharine’s life spanned Anglo-Irish politics, the suffrage movement, the Easter Rising of 1916, the Great War (her two sons served in the British Army) and its aftermath. Her letters cover these events and the friendships and correspondence with many literary persons, including George William Russell (A.E.), G. K. Chesterton, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, Clement King Shorter, the writer Frank James Mathew and the novelist May Sinclair. An early friend of W. B. Yeats, she was seen as part of the Irish literary revival, although in a minor role. Throughout her life she suffered from very poor eyesight. She published five autobiographies, which, together with the letters, provide us with valuable insight into her life and times.

The poetry that emerged from the trenches of WWI is a remarkable body of work, at once political manifesto and literary beacon for the twentieth century. In this passionate recreation of the lives of the greatest poets to come out of the conflict, Nicholas Murray brilliantly reveals the men themselves as well as the struggle of the artist to live fully and to bear witness in the annihilating squalor of battle. Bringing into sharp focus the human detail of each life, using journals, letters and literary archives, Murray brings to life the men's indissoluble comradeship, their complex sexual mores and their extraordinary courage. Poignant, vivid and unfailingly intelligent, Nicholas Murray's study offers new and finely tuned insight into the - often devastatingly brief - lives of a remarkable generation of men.

The Great War of 1914–1918 marks a turning point in modern history and culture. This Companion offers critical overviews of the major literary genres and social contexts that define the study of the literatures produced by the First World War. The volume comprises original essays by distinguished scholars of international reputation, who examine the impact of the war on various national literatures, principally Great Britain, Germany, France and the United States, before addressing the way the war affected Modernism, the European avant-garde, film, women's writing, memoirs, and of course the war poets. It concludes by addressing the legacy of the war for twentieth-century literature. The Companion offers readers a chronology of key events and publication dates covering the years leading up to and including the war, and ends with a current bibliography of further reading organised by chapter topics.

Passchendaele In Perspective explores the context and real nature of the participants experience, evaluates British and German High Command, the aerial and maritime dimensions of the battle, the politicians and manpower debates on the home front and it looks at the tactics employed, the weapons and equipment used, the experience of the British; German and indeed French soldiers. It looks thoroughly into the Commonwealth soldiers contribution and makes an unparalleled attempt to examine together in one volume specialist facets of the battle, the weather, field survey and cartography, discipline and morale, and the cultural and social legacy of the battle, in art, literature and commemoration. Each one of its thirty chapters presents a thought-provoking angle on the subject.They add up to an unique analysis of the battle from Commonwealth, American, German, French, Belgian and United Kingdom historians. This book will undoubtedly become a valued work of reference for all those with an interest in World War One.

Vera Brittain is most widely known as the woman who immortalized a lost generation in her haunting autobiography of the Great War, TESTAMENT OF YOUTH. Writer, pacifist and feminist, she condemned her provincial background but remained acutely conscious of the conventional elements in her own character; she revealed a richly emotional life in her writing but was outwardly sober and reserved; she possessed a fierce desire for fame and recognition but was ready to sacrifice both on matters of principle. This biography - comprehensive, authoritative and immensely readable - confirms Vera Brittain's stature as one of the most remarkable women of our time.

Although war memoirs constitute a rich, varied literary form, they are often dismissed by historians as unreliable. This collection of essays is one of the first to explore the modern war memoir, revealing the genre’s surprising capacity for breadth and sophistication while remaining sensitive to the challenges it poses for scholars. Covering conflicts from the Napoleonic era to today, the studies gathered here consider how memoirs have been used to transmit particular views of war even as they have emerged within specific social and political contexts.