Landscapes And Voices Of The Great War

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- List of Figures -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- PART I Real and Imagined Spaces -- 1 "Funny Men and Charming Girls": Revue and the Theatrical Landscape of 1914-1918 -- 2 "When Words Are Not Enough": The Aural Landscape of Britain's Modern Memory of 1914-18 -- 3 Maisons de Tolérance : The Real and Imagined Sexual Landscapes of the Western Front -- 4 "The Delightful Sense of Personal Contact That Your Letter Aroused": Letters and Intimate Lives in the First World War -- PART II Voices -- 5 "A Certain Poetess": Recuperating Jessie Pope (1868-1941) -- 6 Ventriloquizing Voices in World War I: Scribe, Poetess, Philosopher -- 7 Pacifist Writer, Propagandist Publisher: Rose Macaulay and Hodder & Stoughton -- 8 From Collusion to Condemnation: The Evolving Voice of "Woodbine Willie"--PART III Landscapes -- 9 First World War Nursing Narratives in the Middle East -- 10 Cars in the Desert: Claud H. Williams, S.C. Rolls and the Anglo-Sanusi War -- 11 Murmurs of War: Grace Fallow Norton and "The Red Road"--12 Landscapes of Memory in Centenary Fiction -- Contributors -- Index

This comparative and transnational study of landscapes in the First World War offers new perspectives on the ways in which landscapes were idealised, mobilised, interpreted, exploited, transformed and destroyed by the conflict. The collection focuses on four themes: environment and climate, industrial and urban landscapes, cross-cultural encounters, and legacies of the war. The chapters cover Europe, Russia, the Middle East, Africa and the US, drawing on a range of approaches including battlefield archaeology, military history, medical humanities, architecture, literary analysis and environmental history. This volume explores the environmental impact of the war on diverse landscapes and how landscapes shaped soldiers’ experiences at the front. It investigates how rural and urban locales were mobilised to cater to the demands of industry and agriculture. The enduring physical scars and the role of landscape as a crucial locus of memory and commemoration are also analysed. The chapter 'The Long Carry: Landscapes and the Shaping of British Medical Masculinities in the First World War' is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license via link.springer.com.

This book explores how humorous depictions of the Great War helped to familiarise, domesticate and tame the conflict. In contrast to the well-known First World War literature that focuses on extraordinary emotional disruption and the extremes of war, this study shows other writers used humour to create a gentle, mild amusement, drawing on familiar, popular genres and forms used before 1914. Emily Anderson argues that this humorous literature helped to transform the war into quotidian experience. Based on little-known primary material uncovered through detailed archival research, the book focuses on works that, while written by celebrated authors, tend not to be placed in the canon of Great War literature. Each chapter examines key examples of literary texts, ranging from short stories and poetry, to theatre and periodicals. In doing so, the book investigates the complex political and social significance of this tame style of humour.

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.

Stark, moving but with glimmers of humour amongst the wreckage, "The Hardest Part" asks perhaps the hardest question of all when faced with the horrors of the 1st World War - where was God to be found in the carnage of the western front? Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy's answer, that through the cross God shares in human suffering rather than being a ‘passionate potentate’ looking down unmoved by death, injury and destruction on an immense scale, was, and still is, revolutionary. Marking the centenary both of the end of the First World War and the original publication of The Hardest Part, this new critical edition contains a contextual introduction, a brief biography of Studdert Kennedy, annotated bibliography and the full text of the first edition of the book, with explanatory notes.

War is only a small part of military life. Uniformed men and women spend the vast majority of their time away from combat, training, receiving medical attention, burying the dead and undertaking the myriad tasks of survival in an operational zone. Beyond Combat explores how the military manages its ‘other’ roles, as well as the experiences of the servicemen and women themselves. With contributions from Christina Twomey, Noah Riseman, Shirleene Robinson and Major Clare O’Neill, among others, Beyond Combat is a ground-breaking examination of life beyond the frontline.

The original edition of this landmark book brought history to life in a way that had never been done before - through the words of ordinary men and women. Their eyewitness accounts tell the story of the war in a way that no other history title can. Now this bestselling book has been edited, adapted and illlustrated to make it more accessible and even more commercial. It is the only history book on the market that consists almost entirely of authentic oral accounts of the Great War, told in the words of the people who survived it. Divided into three sections, each section is arranged thematically so that readers can find out more about subjects such as what life was really like in the trenches or how women contributed to the war effort. Fully illustrated with photographs from the Imperial War Museum archives, maps and timelines, complete with special features boxes giving additional background information and a glossary, this book is destined to become an essential reference for pupils, teachers and families everywhere.

This book provides a new social history of British performance cultures in the early decades of the twentieth century, where performance across stage and screen was generated by dynamic and transformational industries. Exploring an era book-ended by wars and troubled by social unrest and political uncertainty, A Social History of British Performance Cultures 1900–1939 makes use of the popular material cultures produced by and for the industries – autobiographies, fan magazines and trade journals, as well as archival holdings, popular sketches, plays and performances. Maggie B. Gale looks at how the performance industries operated, circulated their products and self-regulated their professional activities, in a period where enfranchisement, democratization, technological development and legislation shaped the experience of citizenship. Through close examination of material evidence and a theoretical underpinning, this book shows how performance industries reflected and challenged this experience, and explored the ways in which we construct our ‘performance’ as participants in the public realm. Suited not only to scholars and students of British theatre and theatre history, but to general readers as well, A Social History of British Performance Cultures 1900–1939 offers an original intervention into the construction of British theatre and performance histories, offering new readings of the relationship between the material cultures of performance, the social, professional and civic contexts from which they arise, and on which they reflect.