Women's Writing on the First World War - Hardcover

A wide range of interesting and original material (Years Work in English Studies)

Fascinating compilation from America, Britain and selected bits of Europe ... The book is neatly structured ... The editors' desire to reshape our understanding of war writing has real impact here, in its constant surprising shifts of perspective ... a salutary celebration of distaff creativity in the first decades of the century. (Michelene Wandor, The Guardian)

Fascinating anthology ... the book adds not only to our understanding of the conflict but also extends our conception of the term war writing. Especially poignant are the first-hand accounts written by nurses (History Today)

The First World War inspired a huge outpouring of writing, including many classic accounts of the horrors of the trenches, written by men. What has been less visible until now is the Wars impact upon women writers, whose experience was often very different from that of their male counterparts. This anthology brings together women's writing from across the world, covering every genre of writing about the War from the period 1914 to 1930. Letters, diary entries, reportage, and essays, as well as polemical texts in favour of, or in opposition to, the hostilities, offer an interesting counterpoint to the novels and short stories through which women sought to encompass the extremes of wartime life as they saw it. This anthology demonstrates how the Great War acted as a catalyst for women writers, enabling them to find a public voice and to assert their own attitude to social and moral issues.