When the War was Over

[steepholm]

My Awfully Big Blog Adventure post today is on the books that got written on the world wars, and the ones that didn't.

Comments

[cmcmck]

I need to take issue with one of your comments. Rosenberg's work wasn't brought to fame by the war and its immediate aftermath. He was forgotten for a generation and his memory only kept green by his close friend and fellow poet, the late Joseph Leftwich, 'Leftie', whom I was honoured to meet in his old age.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Well, there were significant prose works written about the Great War while it was still being fought, but they've been pushed a little to one side.

H.G. Wells' Mr Britling sees it through deals mainly with the home front- including the aftermath of a Zeppelin attack- but also with the trenches. It was a best seller at the time and has been unfairly forgotten.

Then there are several stories by Kipling- including the horrific and extraordinary "Mary Postgate".

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

The blogpost has reminded me that my paper for my undergraduate course on Gender and War was on representations of 20th century women's war services in children's fiction. Happy to email if you'd be interested to see bibliography etc.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

This is a side-issue to your specific point, but two things come to mind:

1) Tom Shippey's point that The Lord of the Rings is a very, very long-delayed literary response to WW1.

2) Kingsley Amis's observation that the reason there were better war poets in WW1 than WW2 is that most of the better young poets weren't in military service. (I think they were a little less desperate for medically-dubious cannon fodder in the second war.) He's thinking particularly of Larkin and Wain; but Amis himself did serve.