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World War 1 One ww1 wwII greatwar great 1914 1918 first battalion regiment
Recomended reading on the subject of the Great War 1914-1918
At discounted prices.
John Perry
In a world desperate for authentic heroes, the story of Alvin C. York reminds us of the true meaning of heroism. York's bravery on the battlefield made him famous, but it was his decision to turn down the easy riches of celebrity that secured his position as one of history's greatest Christian patriots. Based on new interviews with all of York's living children, and York's own diaries, this exhaustive biography follows the young soldier from the hills of Tennessee to the battlefields of France, down Broadway in a triumphant ticker-tape parade, and back home to his family farm where he spent the rest of his life in service to his community and his God.More information on:
Sgt. York: His Life, Legend & Legacy: The Remarkable Untold Story of Sgt. Alvin C. York
Ruth Royce
The brave children of World War One France including: the child despatch bearer, the Heroine of Fort Montere and the Hero of the Guns...More information on:
Heroic Children of World War One: True Tales of Courage from the Warzone
John Keegan
The First World War created the modern world. A conflict of unprecedented ferocity, it abruptly ended the relative peace and prosperity of the Victorian era, unleashing such demons of the twentieth century as mechanized warfare and mass death. It also helped to usher in the ideas that have shaped our times--modernism in the arts, new approaches to psychology and medicine, radical thoughts about economics and society--and in so doing shattered the faith in rationalism and liberalism that had prevailed in Europe since the Enlightenment. With The First World War, John Keegan, one of our most eminent military historians, fulfills a lifelong ambition to write the definitive account of the Great War for our generation. Probing the mystery of how a civilization at the height of its achievement could have propelled itself into such a ruinous conflict, Keegan takes us behind the scenes of the negotiations among Europe's crowned heads (all of them related to one another by blood) and ministerMore information on:
The First World War
Various
Ages 18 & up. The recent PBS 8-part miniseries THE GREAT WAR sparked renewed interest in the First World War. More than photographs or eyewitness reports, the poetry written during the embedded the horror of the war in our consciousness. Now, supplemented with five new poems, the works of 38 British, European, and American writers collected here include some of the most outstanding and poignant poems of this century.More information on:
The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry: Revised Edition (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin)
Various
ages 18 & up. This new collection of short stories about World War I features works by such famous British authors as Joseph Conrad, W. Somerset Maugham, Arthur Conan Doyle, John Buchan, Rudyard Kipling, D. H. Lawrence, John Galsworthy, Radclyffe Hall, Katherine Mansfield, Robert Graves, Muriel Spark, and Julian Barnes. Written during the war and after, these stories illustrate the impact of the Great War on British society and culture, as well as the many ways in which short fiction contributed to the literature of that time period.More information on:
The Penguin Book of First World War Stories (Penguin Classics)
Stuart Sillars
An illustrated study guide to poetry written by men and women in all parts of the British Isles during the First World War, 1914–18. This rich and valuable ebook has numerous fascinating hyperlinks to online resources. It discusses significant individual poems by the writers named, exploring them within their social, political and aesthetic frames and summarising important earlier critical readings and responses. It is copiously illustrated and covers Thomas Hardy, Popular Poetry, Anthologies, War Poetry by Women, the work of Graves, Blunden and Gurney, Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, Edward Thomas, David Jones, Irish poetry, Scottish poetry, War Poetry and Modernism. Stuart Sillars is Professor of English at the University of Bergen, Norway. He has written extensively on the literature and visual art of the twentieth century: his books include Art and Survival in First World War Britain (Macmillan, 1987), British Romantic Art and the First World War (Macmillan, 1991) and Structure aMore information on:
Fields of Agony: British Poetry of the First World War (Literature Insights)
Trevor Royle
This anthology addresses Scotland`s unique contribution to the literature of the First World War. Well-known writers such as John Buchan, Eric Linklater, Hugh MacDiarmid, Compton Mackenzie, are included, as well as poets like Joseph Lee and Roderick Watson Kerr.More information on:
In Flanders Fields: Scottish Poetry and Prose of the First World War by Trevor Royle
Angela K. Smith
This book investigates the connection between women's writing about WWI and the development of literary modernisms, focusing on issues of gender which remain topical today. Drawing on a wealth of unpublished diaries and letters, the book examines the way in which the new roles undertaken by women triggered a search for new forms of expression. Blending literary criticism and history, the book contributes to the scholarship of women and expands our definition of modernismsMore information on:
The Second Battlefield: Women, Modernism and the First World War
Bob Blaisdell (ed)
This original anthology features tales written mostly by former soldiers and others with firsthand experience of World War I's devastation. Contents include "Introduction to the Trenches" by Richard Aldington, "The Blind Ones," by Isaak Babel, and tales by Ernest Hemingway, Ford Madox Ford, John Galsworthy, Rudyard Kipling, Katherine Mansfield, and others.More information on:
World War One Short Stories (Dover Thrift Editions)
Vivien Noakes
There are many anthologies of poetry of the First World War, reflecting the huge interest there is in this subject, but "Voices of Silence" is unlike any of them. The poetry of the First World War has determined our perception of the war itself. Yet, this perception is based on the interpretation of a few poets who have become household names - writers such as Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon and Isaac Rosenberg. Less literary but equally important, the poetry gathered together in this volume has been drawn from old newspapers and journals, trench and hospital magazines, individual volumes of verse, gift books, postcards, and an illicit manuscript magazine put together by conscientious objectors. For the first time, the huge body of rich, exciting and often deeply moving work that complements the established literary canon has been revived. It adds a new dimension to our perception of the immediate response to war - not least in the soldiers' recurring and important use of humour. WrittMore information on:
Voices of Silence: The Alternative Book of First World War Poetry
Dorothy Goldman Ed
Until now the impact of The First World War upon women writers has been less visible than that of their male counterparts. This anthology brings together women's writing about the War from the period 1914 to 1930. Letters, diary entries, and essays offer an interesting counterpoint to the novels and short stories through which women sought to encompass the extremes of wartime life.More information on:
Women's Writing on the First World War
Vera Brittain
Bringing together a selection of Vera Brittain’s poetry and prose, some of it never published before, this collection commemorates the men she loved—fiancé, brother, and two close friends—who served and died in World War I. It draws on her experiences as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse in London, Malta, and France, and illustrates her growing conviction of the wickedness of all war. Illustrated with many extraordinary photographs from Brittain’s own albums, and edited with a new introduction by Mark Bostridge, this is an elegy to men who lost their lives in a bloody conflict.More information on:
Because You Died: Poetry and Prose of the First World War and Beyond
Catherine Reilly (Compiler)
Your battle wounds are scars upon my heart' wrote Vera Brittain in a poem to her beloved brother, four days before he died in June 1918. The rediscovery of TESTAMENT OF YOUTH has reminded a new generation of the bitter sufferings of women as well as men in the terrible madness of the First World War. This, the first anthology of women war poets for over sixty years, will come as a surprise to many. It shows, for example, that women were writing protest poetry before Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, and that the view of 'the women at home', ignorant and idealistic, was quite false. Many of these poems come out of direct experiences of nursing the victims of trench warfare, or the pain of lovers, brothers, sons lost. Poets include: Nancy Cunard, Rose Macaulay, Charlotte Mew, Alice Meynell, Edith Nesbit, Edith Sitwell, Marie Stopes, Katharine Tynan. Here, as elsewhere, 'the poetry is in the pity' - a moving record of women's experience of war.More information on:
Scars Upon My Heart: Women's Poetry and Verse of the First World War
Fiona Waters - Ed
Illustrated with magnificent crisp, contemporary photographs from the Daily Mail of World War I battlefields, battles, and heartbreaking scenes on the homefront, this book would serve as a fine companion to Paul Fussell's "The Great War and Modern Memory," which also invokes poetry. The text of "A Corner of a Foreign Field," however, is entirely of poems written during the war, many by well known writers like Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen, Sigfried Sassoon, etc. Far more, however, are by lesser known or unknown poets, including many women, all of whom I was unaware. These include some of the finest entries, made even more powerful because they came as a surprise. This book features prominently on my bookshelf.More information on:
A Corner of a Foreign Field: The Illustrated Poetry of the First World War
Elizabeth A. Marsland
As we approach the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War, this timely reissue, first published in 1991, evaluates the function of poetry in wartime Europe, arguing that war poetry must be understood as a social as well as a literary phenomenon. As well as locating the work of well-known French, English and German war poets in a European context, Elizabeth Marsland discusses lesser-known poetry of the war years, including poems by women and the neglected tradition of civilian protest through poetry. Identifying shared characteristics as well as the unique features of each nation’s poetry, The Nation’s Cause affords new insight into the relationship between nationalism and the social attitudes that determined the conduct of war.More information on:
The Nation's Cause: French, English and German Poetry of the First World War (Routledge Revivals)
Susanne Christine Puissant
How does irony affect the evaluation and perception of the First World War both then and now? Irony and the Poetry of the First World War traces one of the major features of war poetry from the author's application as a means of disguise, criticism or psychological therapy to its perception and interpretation by the reader.More information on:
Irony and the Poetry of the First World War
George Parfitt
George Parfitt aims to recover a sense of the poetry of the war and places it in a context of national, cultural, and literary history. One of his aims is to recover a sense of the range of responses to the war that were recorded in the poetry of the time, and to suggest that the tendency to focus on just a few well-known figures (Brooke, Owen, and Sassoon) distorts our sense of what the poetry can tell us about the war itself and its appalling effects. Contents: 1 Overviews; 2 Cleansing and Ruper Brooke; 3 Satire and Siegfried Sassoon; 4 The Voice of the Noncommissioned; 5 Belief and Wilfred Owen; 6 England: Country and History; 7 Robert Graves; 8 Reception and Valuing; Conclusion; Bibliography.More information on:
English Poetry of the First World War
Jim Haughey
This first book-length study of Irish poetry about the First World War, examines the extent to which the war has been preserved and appropriated in Irish memory. While the early chapters explore the various historical myths about Ireland's role in the war and review the war verse written by Irish soldier poets, the attention later shifts to Irish poets on the various home fronts who express a wide range of attitudes toward the war.More information on:
The First World War in Irish Poetry
Ivor Gurney & Wilfred Owen
ages 18 & up. This new selection brings together the poetry of three of the most distinctive and moving voices to emerge from the First World War. Here are the controlled passion and rich metaphors of Wilfred Owen's celebrated verses such as "Anthem for Doomed Youth" and "Strange Meeting", along with many of his lesser-known works. The elegiac poems of Ivor Gurney, including "Requiem" and "The Silent One", reflect his love of language, music and landscape, while the visceral works of Isaac Rosenberg, such as "Break of Day in the Trenches", are filled with stark imagery but also, as in "Louse Hunting", with vitality and humour. Each poet reflects the disparate experiences of ordinary soldiers in war, and attempts to capture man's humanity in the most inhumane of circumstances.More information on:
Three Poets of the First World War (Penguin Classics)
Carole Gerson & Gwendolyn Davies (eds)
This is the only anthology to present a full history of Canadian poetry — from the early 1600s through the expansiveness of poetic activity during the 18th and 19th centuries and into the flourishing first decades of the 20th century. The editors have compiled works from over 50 poets, including the verse of Isabella Valancy Crawford, Bliss Carman, Archibald Lampman and Duncan Campbell Scott, and several long narrative poems, including Oliver Goldsmith's "The Rising Village" and Crawford's "Malcolm's Katie." It includes World War 1More information on:
Canadian Poetry from the Beginnings Through the First World War (New Canadian Library)
Martin Taylor Ed
A remarkable anthology, including many largely unknown poems from the trenches, in which Martin Taylor illustrates the extraordinary range of emotions generated by the horror of the First World War and the experience of trench warfare.More information on:
Lads: Love Poetry of the Trenches (Duckbacks)
Santanu Das Ed.
In a time when First World War studies remains largely Eurocentric, this book offers space for discussion in a comparative framework, giving a multi-racial and international view on modern memories of the War. It recounts experiences of combatants and non-combatants and draws upon fresh historical, literary and visual archival material.More information on:
Race, Empire and First World War Writing
Elizabeth Vandiver
Elizabeth Vandiver examines the ways in which British poets of the First World War used classical literature, culture, and history as a source of images, ideas, and even phrases for their own poetry. Vandiver argues that classics was a crucial source for writers from a wide variety of backgrounds, from working-class poets to those educated in public schools, and for a wide variety of political positions and viewpoints. Poets used references to classics both to support and to oppose the war from its beginning all the way to the Armistice and after. By exploring the importance of classics in the poetry of the First World War, Vandiver offers a new perspective on that poetry and on the history of classics in British culture.More information on:
Stand in the Trench, Achilles: Classical Receptions in British Poetry of the Great War (Classical Presences)
Tim Kendall
Tim Kendall's study offers the fullest account to date of a tradition of modern English war poetry. Stretching from the Boer War to the present day, it focuses on many of the twentieth-century's finest poets - combatants and non-combatants alike - and considers how they address the ethical challenges of making art out of violence. Poetry, we are often told, makes nothing happen. But war makes poetry happen: the war poet cannot regret, and must exalt at, even the most appalling experiences. Modern English War Poetry not only assesses the problematic relationship between war and its poets, it also encourages an urgent reconsideration of the modern poetry canon and the (too often marginalised) position of war poetry within it. The aesthetic and ethical values on which canonical judgements have been based are carefully scrutinized via a detailed analysis of individual poets. The poets discussed include Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling, Wilfred Owen, Charlotte Mew, Edward Thomas, Ivor Gurney,More information on:
Modern English War Poetry
James E. Kitchen & Alisa Miller and Laura Rowe
The First World War is a subject that has fascinated the public as well as the academic community since the close of hostilities in 1918. Over the past thirty years in particular, the historiography associated with the conflict has expanded considerably to include studies whose emphases range between the economic, social, cultural, literary, and imperial aspects of the war, all coinciding with revisions to perceptions of its military context. Nevertheless, much of the discussion of the First World War remains confined to the experiences of a narrow collection of European armies on the battlefields of Northern France and Belgium. This volume seeks to push the focus away from the Western Front and to draw out the multi-spectral nature of the conflict, examining forgotten theatres and neglected experiences. The chapters explore the question of what total war meant for the lives of people around the world implicated in this momentous event, broadening current debates on the First World WarMore information on:
Other Combatants, Other Fronts: Competing Histories of the First World War
Sharon Ouditt
'They also serve who only stand and wait' The idea of there being a 'women's writing' during the First World War is often dismissed. The war, the story goes, was a masculine domain, and as women did not fight, it is also assumed that they were excluded from a war experience. This bibliography challenges that view by listing and annotating hundreds of published books, articles, memoirs, diaries and letters written by women during the First World War. Included are: * Virginia Woolf * Katherine Mansfield * G.B Stern * Brenda Girvin * known and unknown autobiographers and diarists * writers of pro and anti-war propaganda * journal and magazine articles * literary, cultural and historical criticismMore information on:
Women Writers of the First World War: An Annotated Bibliography
George Herbert Clarke
Volume: 1 Publisher: Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin company Publication date: 1917 Subjects: World War, 1914-1918 Notes: This is an OCR reprint. There may be numerous typos or missing text. There are no illustrations or indexes. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. You can also preview the book there.More information on:
A Treasury of War Poetry, British and American Poems of the World War, 1914-1917 (Volume 1)
Martin Stephen
On page 78, Stephen quotes another author as saying, "In the Great War eight million people were destroyed because two persons, the Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his consort, had been shot." Stephen's response is: "Historically, this is hogwash. Eight million people died because Germany was a lethal combination of militarism and expansionism, without the saving virtues of wisdom or humility. Eight million people died because Germany quite calmly decided to invade two countries against whom it had no specific quarrel..." This off-topic digression dooms him. His decision to digress, and the substance of that digression, forces one to ask how we can trust the rest of his writing, in this book and others. How dare he make such a statement when not 15 years earlier, Britain invented concentration camps to imprison and starve South African civilians. What about English behavior in India not only before the Great War, but after? When was England itself ever not militaristic or expansioniMore information on:
The Price of Pity: Poetry History and Myth in the Great War
Alan J. Guy (Editor), etc. (Editor), R.N.W. Thomas (Editor), Gerard DeGroot (Editor)
Spanning nearly two hundred years, this volume brings together letters and diaries recounting British experience in very diverse theatres of war. Included is the journal of George Durant on the Expedition to Martinique and Guadeloupe, 1758-58 and Rev.Duncan's diary gives a personal view of Haig's GHQ from 1916-18.More information on:
Military Miscellany: Manuscripts from the Seven Years War, the First and Second Sikh Wars and the First World War v. 1
Jon Stallworthy
In times of war and national calamity—writes Jon Stallworthy in his illuminating survey of the lives and work of twelve celebrated war poets—large numbers of people seldom seen in church or bookshop will turn for consolation and inspiration to religion and poetry. Never more so than in World War I did the poignant poetry of hundreds of young men scarred by battle reach so large and eager an audience. Among the most famous and memorable of these youthful voices were those of the strikingly handsome, golden-haired, nobly patriotic Rupert Brooke, dead at twenty-eight; the serious-minded, poignantly truthful Wilfred Owen, who was shot down, at twenty-five; and the defiant Siegfried Sassoon whose gallantry in the Somme Offensive earned him the Military Cross and nickname Mad Jack. Profiled in this volume, too, and illustrated throughout with photographs of the action they saw and manuscripts of the poems they wrote are Edmund Blunden, whose work is haunted by the war until his death in 1974More information on:
Great Poets of World War I: Poetry from the Great War
- The Wartime Memories Project is the original WW1 and WW2 commemoration website.
- 1st of September 2023 marks 24 years since the launch of the Wartime Memories Project. Thanks to everyone who has supported us over this time.
Want to find out more about your relative's service? Want to know what life was like during the Great War? Our Library contains many many diary entries, personal letters and other documents, most transcribed into plain text.
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- 27th April 2024
Please note we currently have a massive backlog of submitted material, our volunteers are working through this as quickly as possible and all names, stories and photos will be added to the site. If you have already submitted a story to the site and your UID reference number is higher than 264001 your submission is still in the queue, please do not resubmit.
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