Product Description

This new anthology brings together 270 poems and is the most complete and authoritative ever compiled. Arranged by year rather than by poet, it is the first to reveal how poetry developed between 1914 and 1918, and afterwards from 1919-1930.The poetry that came out of the First World War exposed, for the first time in history, the real horror of war. The result is an extraordinary record of passionate feelings and appalling experiences, written by men and women from widely different backgrounds, of unique and enduring importance.All the major poets are generously represented, but here too are many unfamiliar yet remarkable poems, often not conforming to the usual modern assumptions about 1914-1918 verse. Accompanying notes to the poems, historical events and the poets give precise, relevant information and suggest links to other poems, so the book as a whole forms a fascinating, moving narrative.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #79417 in Books
• Published on: 2007-10-30
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 352 pages

Review
'Much more than merely another anthology... makes all the rest seem academically too thin, too tentative and personal... The editors have researched the background to the writing of each of the poems... and the notes... are excellent, brief, explicit, and provocative in the best ways; they make us want to know more.' --Frank McCombie

'Recommended unhesitatingly to both a popular and academic readership.' --Choice, USA

About the Author
Dominic Hibberd and John Onions co-edited the anthology Poetry of the Great War in 1996. This new book represents their work and research since. Dominic Hibberd's publications include highly praised biographies of Wilfred Owen and Harold Monro; John Onions's include Fiction and Drama of the Great War 1918-39.

Customer Reviews

Everything that matters about the 1st World War
This is a wonderful book. More than a poetry anthology although the poems are the meat of it. Because it's presented chronologically - and contains some of the dross and jingoistic work as well as the great poems -it makes sense of the war, the way people responded to it and the way it developed -more than a dozen history texts. Read the introduction, and pause to read the poems that illustrate it -you'll learn so much. As well as the pity of war I came away with greater respect for what they perhaps rightly believed had to be done. Good poems by women, too, and short biographies of intriguing characters known and unknown. Brilliant book.