The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry (5 page)

31.
Arthur Waugh, ‘War Poetry (1914–1918)',
Tradition and Change: Studies in Contemporary Literature
(London: Chapman and Hall Ltd., 1919), pp. 41–42.

32.
Lieut. W. F. Halliday (West Yorks),
Refining Fires
(London: Erskine Macdonald Ltd., 1917); Lieut. P. H. B. Lyon (D. L. I.),
Songs of Youth and War
(London: Erskine Macdonald Ltd., 1917). Kyle's publicity for his poets always gives their rank, regiment and any decorations they may have won. Of his extensive list, only the author of
Pastorals
(1916) seems to have gone on to greater things – a certain ‘Lieut. E. A. Blunden (Sussex Regt.)'.

33.
Galloway Kyle, ‘Preface',
Soldier Poets: Songs of the Fighting Men
(London: Erskine Macdonald Ltd., 1916), pp. 7–9.

34.
More Songs by the Fighting Men. Soldier Poets: Second Series
, edited by Galloway Kyle (London: Erskine MacDonald, 1917).

35.
E. B. Osborn, ‘Introduction',
The Muse in Arms: A Collection of War Poems, for the Most Part Written in the Field of Action, by Seamen, Soldiers and Flying Men who are Serving, or have Served in the Great War
(London: John Murray, 1917), pp. v–xvii.

36.
Robert Graves, ‘Big Words',
Over the Brazier
(London: The Poetry Bookshop, 1916), p. 11.

37.
A. J. P. Taylor,
The First World War: An Illustrated History
(London: Hamish Hamilton, 1963), p. 140. ‘Old Bill' was a popular wartime character created by the cartoonist Bruce Bairnsfather (1888–1959).

38.
May Wedderburn Cannan,
Grey Ghosts and Voices
(Kineton: Roundwood Press, 1976), p. 113.

39.
Candace Ward, ‘Note',
World War One British Poets: Brooke, Owen, Sassoon, Rosenberg and Others
(New York: Dover Publications Inc., 1997), p. iii.

40.
See, for example, the forty or so albums of poems culled from newspapers and periodicals in the War Poetry Collection at Birmingham Central Library or the section on ‘Poems from
The Ilkeston Pioneer
and
The Ilkeston Advertiser
' in Simon Featherstone's
War Poetry: A Introductory Reader
(London: Routledge, 1995), pp. 135–139.

41.
None of the contributors to either Lyn Macdonald's
1914: The Days of Hope
(London: Michael Joseph, 1987) or Max Arthur's
Forgotten Voices of the Great War
(London: Ebury Press, 2002), for example, cite Brooke or his poems as reasons for enlisting.

42.
Bernard Bergonzi,
Heroes' Twilight: A Study of the
Literature of the Great War
(Manchester: Carcanet, 1996), p. 36.

43.
Ivor Gurney: Collected Letters
, edited by R. K. R. Thornton (Ashington and Manchester: MidNAG and Carcanet, 1991), pp. 210, 412.

44.
See George Parfitt,
English Poetry of the First World War: Contexts and Themes
(Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1990), p. 43.

45.
W. H. Massingham, ‘Indignation',
The Nation
, Volume 24, Number 15 (16 June 1917), p. 278; Virginia Woolf, ‘Two Soldier-Poets',
The Times Literary Supplement
, Number 862 (11 July 1918), p. 323.

46.
Edmund Gosse, ‘Some Soldier Poets',
op. cit
., p. 283.

47.
Siegfried Sassoon,
Siegfried's Journey
(London: Faber and Faber, 1945), p. 77.

48.
Hynes,
op. cit
., p. 294.

49.
Osbert Sitwell, ‘The War-Horse Chants',
Out of the Flame
(London: Grant Richards Ltd., 1923), p. 57.

50.
The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke: With a Memoir
(London: Sidgwick & Jackson Ltd., 1918). These figures are taken from Hassall,
op. cit
., p. 528.

51.
Parfitt,
op. cit.
, p. 24.

52.
St. John Adcock,
For Remembrance: Soldier Poets Who Have Fallen in the War
(London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1918), p. 47.

53.
Stanley Casson, ‘Rupert Brooke's Grave',
The London Mercury
, Volume II, Number 12 (October 1920), p. 715.

54.
Siegfried Sassoon,
Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man
(London: Faber and Gwyer, 1928); Robert Graves,
Good-bye to All That: An Autobiography
(London:
Jonathan Cape, 1929); Erich Maria Remarque,
All Quiet on the Western Front
, translated by A. W. Wheen (London: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1929).

55.
J. C. Squire, ‘Editorial Notes',
The London Mercury
, Volume XXI, Number 121 (November 1929), p. 1.

56.
R. C. Sherriff,
Journey's End: A Play in Three Acts
(London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1929);
All Quiet on the Western Front
, directed by Lewis Milestone (Universal Pictures, 1930).

57.
Hynes,
op. cit.
, pp. 450–451.

58.
Poems by Wilfred Owen, with an Introduction by Siegfried Sassoon
(London: Chatto & Windus, 1920).

59.
Wilfred Owen, ‘Preface', Siegfried Sassoon, ‘Introduction',
ibid
., pp. 3, v.

60.
John Middleton Murry, ‘The Poet of the War',
The Nation and Athenaeum
, Volume 28, Number 21 (19 February 1921), p. 678.

61.
The Poems of Wilfred Owen: A New Edition, Including Many Pieces Now First Published, and Notices of his Life and Work by Edmund Blunden
(London: Chatto & Windus, 1931).

62.
Hynes,
op. cit.
, p. 437.

63.
Edmund Blunden, ‘Memoir',
The Poems of Wilfred Owen
,
op. cit.
, p. xxv.

64.
W. H. Auden, ‘Poem XVII',
Look, Stranger
! (London: Faber and Faber, 1936), p. 46. ‘Kathy' is the writer Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923), another of the young Auden's heroes.

65.
C. Day–Lewis,
A Hope for Poetry
(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1934), pp. 14–15.

66.
Letters on Poetry from W. B. Yeats to Dorothy Wellesley
(London: Oxford University Press, 1964), p. 117.

67.
For details, see Brian Bond,
The Unquiet Western Front: Britain's Role in Literature and History
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 51–71 and Claire M. Tylee,
The Great War and Women's Consciousness: Images of Militarism and Feminism in Women's Writings 1914–1964
(Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1990), pp. 1–6.

68.
See Tylee,
ibid.
, p. 4.

69.
Ted Hughes, ‘National Ghost',
Winter Pollen: Occasional Prose
, edited by William Scammell (London: Faber and Faber, 1994), pp. 70.

70.
C. Day–Lewis, ‘Introduction',
The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen
(London: Chatto & Windus, 1963), p. 12.

71.
Cyril Falls,
War Books: A Critical Guide
(London: Peter Davies, 1930), pp. i, xi.

72.
Andrew Rutherford,
The Literature of War: Five Studies in Heroic Virtue
(London: Macmillan and Co., 1978), p. 65.

73.
I. M. Parsons, ‘Introduction',
Men Who March Away: Poems of The First World War
(London: Chatto & Windus, 1965), pp. 5, 18–28.

74.
This phrase is adapted from Douglas Jerrold's
The Lie About the War: A Note on Some Contemporary War Writers
(London: Faber and Faber, 1930). This, along with Falls,
op. cit
, are two of the more sustained responses to the ‘Lavatory School' of war writers in the ‘thirties.

75.
A selective list of these works can be found in Dominic Hibberd,
Wilfred Owen: A New Biography
(London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2002), pp. 381–382.

76.
Stephen MacDonald,
Not About Heroes. The
Friendship of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen
(London: Faber and Faber, 1993); Pat Barker,
Regeneration
(London: Viking, 1991),
The Eye in the Door
(London: Viking, 1994),
The Ghost Road
(London: Viking, 1995).

77.
Wilfred Owen, ‘Preface',
Poems by Wilfred Owen
,
op. cit.
, p. 3. For an account of the unveiling of this memorial, see P. J. Kavanagh, ‘All for Jove',
People and Places: A Selection 1975–1987
(Manchester: Carcanet, 1988), pp. 15–18.

78.
Andrew Motion, ‘Introduction',
First World War Poems
(London: Faber and Faber, 2003), p. xi.

79.
Catherine Reilly,
English Poetry of the First World War: A Bibliography
(London: George Prior, 1978).

80.
Scars Upon My Heart: Women's Poetry of the First World War
, edited by Catherine Reilly (London: Virago, 1981).

81.
Martin Stephen, ‘Preface',
Never Such Innocence: A New Anthology of Great War Verse
(London: Buchan & Enright, 1988), p. 8.

82.
Dominic Hibberd and John Onions, ‘Introduction',
Poetry of the Great War: An Anthology
(London: Macmillan, 1986), pp. 4, 6.

83.
Stephen,
op. cit.
, p. 12.

84.
Wilfred Owen: Selected Letters
, edited by John Bell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 247.

85.
Hibberd and Onions,
op. cit.
, p. 5.

86.
Wilfred Owen, ‘Preface',
Poems by Wilfred Owen
,
op. cit.
, p. 3;

87.
Wilfred Owen, ‘Strange Meeting',
Poems by Wilfred Owen
,
op. cit
., p. 6.

88.
See, for example,
1914–1918 in Poetry
, edited by
E. L. Black (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1970), p. 144.

89.
Quoted in Bond,
op. cit.
, p. 87.

90.
Quoted in Jerome Monaghan, ‘A Monumental Task',
The Times Educational Supplement
, Number XXX (15 November 2002), p. 21.

91.
Edmund Blunden, quoted in Barry Webb,
Edmund Blunden: A Biography
(New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990), p. 46. He uses the same image again in his introduction to Frederic Brereton's
An Anthology of War Poems
(London: Collins, 1930), where he writes: ‘The face of war is one of protean changes. In order to catch those countenances, a man has to be acute in a rare degree' (p. 20).

92.
T. S. Eliot,
The Waste Land
(New York: Boni & Liveright, 1922); David Jones,
In Parenthesis
(London: Faber and Faber, 1938).

93.
A. E. Housman,
A Shropshire Lad
(London: Grant Richards Ltd., 1896).

94.
Quoted in Martin Stephen,
The Price of Pity: Poetry, History and Myth in the Great War
(London: Leo Cooper, 1996), p. 78.

I wish to thank the staff of the British Library, the Bodleian Library in Oxford, Birmingham Central Library and the University of Sussex Library for their help during the early stages of this edition. I'm also very grateful to the English Department at the University of Sussex for providing me with two very able and enthusiastic research assistants: Catherine Ezzo, whose help with the preparation of the texts was invaluable, and Esther MacCallum-Stewart, whose work on the preparation of the supporting material made a potentially irksome task a lot easier.

I'm grateful to friends and colleagues at the Universities of Birmingham and Sussex for their willingness to share their ideas and allow me to test out my own: R. K. R. Thornton, Steve Ellis, Tony Inglis, Norman Vance, Philippa Lyon and particularly John Jacobs and Rodney Hillman: John and Rodney's comments on an early draft of the anthology were invaluable, and their support and encouragement throughout the project are much appreciated. Thanks are also due to Essaka Joshua and Fuyubi Nakamura for their willingness to source and retrieve a number of particularly elusive texts. I'd also like to acknowledge the very real contribution which my students, both undergraduate and postgraduate, made to the final shape of this book; in particular, I am very grateful to Martyn Oliver, Helen Tripp, Ben Scott, Robert Yates and Dendi Wolffsky-Batson for their comments and ideas. My
editors at Penguin also deserve a considerable vote of thanks, especially Martin Toseland and Bob Davenport, whose patience and support during the latter stages of the book was admirable.

My personal thanks go to all those who, in various ways, have ensured the completion of this book: Gillian Walters, Terry and Eileen Walters, Christine Munday, David and Tracy Buxton, Jon and Hildi Mitchell, Linda MacCallum-Stewart and especially Anne Johnson, without whose help and support I would not have been able to create this anthology. My original intention was to dedicate this to my mother and stepfather, Sandra and Dennis O'Leary, in recognition of all the love and support they have given and continue to give me; I hope when they see the dedication, they will understand why I've changed it and why, in a sense, my original dedication to them still stands

My copy-text for the poems in
The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry
has been, in every case, their first publication in book form, on the grounds that this is most likely to represent the author's intentions at the point at he or she wished to place their work before the public. All too often these early versions were subsequently revised, but I've preferred the earlier text because it reflects the authors' intentions at a specific historical moment – usually during the war or shortly afterwards – and, in many cases, are the versions of poems which made a particular poet's reputation.

Some of the poets I've included, of course, didn't live to revise their work. In these cases, I have again used the first book printing of a poem as my copy-text, even when subsequent posthumous editions have shown these early texts to be flawed; this sometimes results in unfamiliar versions of familiar poems, but it does have the advantage of creating a historically coherent edition and, more importantly, it allows the reader to encounter these poems in the form that they were first read.

On the whole, the texts have been reproduced as they originally appeared, retaining all the quirks of spelling, punctuation and capitalisation which characterize the poetry of this period. In line with modern publishing conventions, however, punctuation to indicate section breaks within poems, quotation marks and dashes have
all been standardized. It was common practice to append dates and locations to poems during the war; these can now be found in the Notes.