First World War.com - Prose & Poetry

First World War.com - A multimedia history of world war one

Front cover of 1917 collection of war poems "The Muse in Arms" Prose & Poetry
Updated - Sunday, 14 August, 2005

More than any other conflict, the Great War inspired writers of all generations and classes, most notably among combatants.

The war's poets are chiefly celebrated today, although much outstanding prose work was also produced by such poets as Sassoon and Blunden, chiefly in the form of personal memoir. This section profiles the more renowned authors and contains samples of their work.

Also available in this section are extended features, including a profile of Robert Graves - and, more unusually but nevertheless intriguing, a piece on literary ambulance drivers... There are also two articles written about the author of the war's most famous poem: In Flanders Fields.

The 1917 collection of wartime poetry The Muse in Arms has also been republished here in its entirety.

Click on the relevant links below to access individual articles.

Richard Aldington	John Buchan
Guillaume Apollinaire	Charles Carrington
Bruce Bairnsfather	Guy Chapman
Henri Barbusse	G K Chesterton
Laurence Binyon	Erskine Childers
Edmund Blunden	Sir Winston Churchill
Andre Breton	Norman Cliff
Vera Brittain	Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Hermann Broch	George Coppard
Rupert Brooke	Leslie Coulson

David Jones	Frederic Manning
Pierre Jean Jouve	John McCrae
Ernest Junger	Sir Henry Newbolt
Thomas Kettle	Robert Nichols
Alfred Joyce Kilmer	Ivor Novello
Rudyard Kipling	Wilfred Owen
T.E Lawrence	Max Plowman
Francis Ledwidge	R. C. Potter
Cecil Lewis	J.B. Priestley
Eric Linklater

Sir Herbert Read	Sir Osbert Sitwell
I. L. Read	Charles Hamilton Sorley
Erich Maria Remarque	August Stramm
Frank Richards	Herbert Sulzbach
S J Robinson	Edward Thomas
Isaac Rosenberg	Ernst Toller
Siegfried Sassoon	Georg Trakl
Alan Seeger	H.G. Wells
Robert Service	Hedd Wyn
May Sinclair	Arnold Zweig
Sir Osbert Sitwell

	Robert Nichols: A Poet Rediscovered (click here) Review of a new book by Anne and William Charlton
	France Somewhere (click here) Fictional account of 1st U.S. enlisted man to die in WW1
	Any Soldier to His Son (click here) Poem reflecting upon its author's wartime experiences
	The Muse in Arms (click here) 1917 collection of 131 war-related poems
	War Poetry of S J Robinson (click here) Outstanding present-day collection of WW1 poetry
	Not So Hidden Agendas: Wilfred Owen (click here) History of the publication of Owen's work
	Satirical Magazines of the First World War (click here) British wartime humour celebrated
	German and British Memoirs of WW1 (click here) Survey of wartime memoirs
	Story of John McCrae (click here) Life and times of the poet/doctor
	Making of In Flanders Fields (click here) How the war's best-known poem was written
	Literary Ambulance Drivers (click here) Men and women who volunteered to serve
	Robert Graves: A Twentieth Century Life (click here) Summary of the prolific life of Robert Graves

"Coffin Nails" was a term used by British soldiers to describe cigarettes.