World War I ― A Historical Exploration of Literature

Focusing on the war on the Western and Southern fronts and inclusive of material from all sides of the conflict, this book explores the novels and poems of significant soldier-writers alongside important contemporary historical documents.

• Provides an overview of the First World War on the Western and Southern Fronts, allowing for a general understanding of the war and its effects on governments, armies, soldiers, and civilians

• Explores historical topics ranging from the challenges of waging and sustaining the war to the nature and strains of trench and attritional warfare to the "lived experiences" of soldiers, volunteers, and civilian populations and the ways in which the war was memorialized

• Discusses the significance of novels and poetry as a means to understand the war's challenges and complexities

• Examines one of the earliest and most important war novels (Henri Barbusse's Under Fire), a work that influenced more well-known classics by Erich Maria Remarque and Ernest Hemingway, and the war poetry of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, also examined in this volume

• Includes primary sources from some of the war's most significant writers, such as Vera Brittain, Rebecca West, Ernst Jünger, and Bertrand Russell as well as government documents, war propaganda, and material from some of the physicians who treated shell shock

Eugene Edward Beiriger is associate professor of history and distinguished honors professor at DePaul University.