The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry (30 page)

‘Festubert, 1916' appeared in
The Shepherd and Other Poems
(London: Cobden-Sanderson, 1922). ‘Illusions' and ‘Vlamertinghe: Passing the Chateau, July, 1917' appeared in
Undertones of War
(London: Cobden-Sanderson, 1928). ‘At Senlis Once', ‘Preparations for Victory' and ‘The Midnight Skaters' appeared in
Masks of Time: A New Collection of Poems Principally Meditative
(London: Beaumont Press, 1925). ‘Report on Experience' appeared in
Near and Far: New Poems
(London: Cobden-Sanderson, 1929). ‘Ancre Sunshine' appeared in
Overtones of War: Poems of the First World War
, ed. Martin Taylor (London: Duckworth, 1996).

Vera Brittain
was born in Newcastle under Lyme in 1896, but spent her childhood in Macclesfield and Buxton. Educated at St Monica's, Kingswood, and at Somerville College, Oxford, she had her studies interrupted by the outbreak of war, and in 1915 she joined the Voluntary Aid Detachment as a nurse and served in London, Malta and France. She was one of the first women to graduate from Oxford after the war, and throughout her life she was heavily involved in socialism and the feminist movement. Her wartime experiences are recounted in
Testament of Youth
(London: Victor Gollancz, 1933) and in her diary
Chronicle of Youth
(London: Victor Gollancz, 1981). She died in 1970.

‘Hospital Sanctuary', ‘The Superfluous Woman' and ‘The War Generation:
Ave
' appeared in
Poems of the War and After
(London: Victor Gollancz, 1934).

Rupert Brooke
was born in Rugby in 1887, the son of a housemaster at Rugby School. He was educated there and at King's College, Cambridge. His first book of verse,
Poems
(London:
Sidgwick & Jackson), appeared in 1911. Two years later he became a fellow of King's and then embarked upon a year-long journey around America and the South Seas. Enlisting in the Anson Battalion of the Royal Naval Reserve when war broke out, he saw action in Antwerp in October 1914. Transferring to the Hood Battalion for the Gallipoli Offensive, he contracted septicaemia from a mosquito bite and died on the Greek island of Skyros on St George's Day, 1915.

‘1914: Peace', ‘1914: Safety', ‘1914: The Dead' (both poems) and ‘1914: The Soldier' appeared in
1914 and Other Poems
(London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1915). ‘Fragment' appeared in
The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke: With a Memoir
(London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1918).

May Wedderburn Cannan
was born in Oxford in 1893 and was educated at Wychwood School. She joined the Voluntary Aid Detachment in 1911, training as a nurse and eventually reaching the rank of quartermaster. During the war she spent four weeks in France, working as an auxiliary nurse at Rouen, before returning to England, where she joined the Oxford University Press and became involved in publishing material produced by the government's War Propaganda Bureau. She also worked for Military Intelligence in Paris for a short period. Her autobiography,
Grey Ghosts and Voices
(Kineton: Roundwood Press, 1976), did not appear until after her death in 1973.

‘Lamplight' appeared in
In War Time
(Oxford: B. H. Blackwell, 1917). ‘Paris, November 11, 1918' appeared in
The Splendid Days
(Oxford: B. H. Blackwell, 1919).

G[ilbert] K[eith] Chesterton
was born in London in 1874. He was educated at St Paul's School, going on to study simultaneously at the Slade School of Art and University College, London. He drifted into journalism, which he later claimed was his sole
profession, but he also wrote novels, poetry, and religious and political essays. A Catholic apologist, he is probably best known for his popular Father Brown detective stories. He died in 1936.

‘Elegy in a Country Churchyard' appeared in
The Ballad of St. Barbara and Other Verses
(London: Cecil Palmer, 1922).

Margaret Postgate Cole
was born in Cambridge in 1893 and was educated at Roedean and at Girton College, Cambridge. She taught Classics at St Paul's Girls School in London for a short time, before taking up political work in the Fabian Research Department in 1917. In 1918 she moved to Oxford, where she taught evening classes and worked part-time for the Labour Research Department. In later life, when she was a Labour Party member of the London County Council, Cole was an important figure in the early experiments with comprehensive education. She wrote many books during her lifetime, including political works and detective novels. She was made an OBE in 1965 and a Dame of the British Empire in 1970. She died in 1980.

‘The Veteran' appeared in
An Anthology of War Poems
, ed. Frederick Brereton (London: W. Collins Sons & Co., 1930).

Lesley Coulson
was born in 1889 in Kilburn, London. Well known as a journalist before the war, he rose to become assistant editor of the
Morning Post
. In August 1914 he enlisted as a private in the 2nd Battalion of the London Regiment (Royal Fusiliers). He was wounded at Gallipoli in 1915. Preferring not to seek a commission, he was promoted to sergeant and sent to France. Now attached to the 12th Battalion of the London Regiment (The Rangers), he was killed during a British attack on the German stronghold position of Dewdrop Trench on 8 October 1916.

‘War' appeared in
From an Outpost, and Other Poems
(London: Erskine Macdonald, 1917).

Nancy Cunard
was born at Nevill Holt, Leicestershire, in 1896, the daughter of Sir Bache and Lady Cunard, and was educated privately in London, Germany and Paris. She settled in Paris during the 1920s and became involved in bohemian society, posing as a model for Oskar Kokoschka and Percy Wyndham Lewis. During the Spanish Civil War (1936–9), she went to Spain as a correspondent for the
Manchester Guardian
, and she worked for the Free French in London during the Second World War. She died in 1965.

‘Zeppelins' appeared in
Outlaws
(London: Elkin Matthews, 1921).

Walter de la Mare
was born in Charlton, Kent, in 1873 and was educated at St Paul's Cathedral School. At the age of sixteen he left St Paul's to take up a career in accountancy with the Anglo-American Oil Company. Awarded a government pension of £100 per year for his imaginative writing in 1908, he took up writing full-time. He was made a Companion of Honour in 1948, and in 1953 was made a member of the Order of Merit. He died in 1956.

‘The Marionettes' appeared in
Motley and Other Poems
(London: Constable & Co., 1918).

Eva Dobell
was born in Cheltenham in 1867. She spent most of her life in the Cotswolds, but travelled extensively in Europe and Africa. She worked as a nurse during the war, and was a children's author and an active conservationist throughout her life. She died in 1973.

‘In A Soldiers' Hospital I: Pluck' and ‘In A Soldiers' Hospital II: Gramophone Tunes' appeared in
A Bunch of Cotswold Grasses
(London: Arthur H. Stockwell, 1919).

Helen Parry Eden
was born in London in 1885 and was educated at Roedean, at Manchester University and at King's College Art
School. A prolific poet, she contributed verse to
Punch
, the
Pall Mall Magazine
and other journals. The date of her death is unknown.

‘The Admonition: To Betsey' appeared in
Coal and Candlelight and Other Verses
(London: John Lane, 1918).

Geoffrey Faber
was born in Malvern in 1889 and was educated at Rugby and at both Christ Church and All Souls, Oxford. Commissioned as a second lieutenant in the 3rd Glamorgan Battery of the Royal Field Artillery in November 1914, he transferred to the 2/8th Battalion of the City of London Regiment (The Post Office Rifles) in February 1915. After promotion to temporary lieutenant in September, he became a captain in March 1916 and served in France between January 1917 and January 1919. A publisher by profession, he was the founder and first president of Faber & Faber. He was knighted in 1954, and he died in 1961.

‘The Eve of War' appeared in
Interflow: Poems Chiefly Lyrical
(London: Constable & Co., 1915). ‘Home Service' appeared in
The Buried Stream: Collected Poems 1908 to 1940
(London: Faber & Faber, 1941).

Eleanor Farjeon
was born in London in 1881 and was educated privately. During the war she contributed regularly to
Punch
, and between 1917 and 1930 she wrote verse (as ‘Tomfool') for the
Daily Herald
. A staff member of
Time and Tide
in the 1920s, she is best known today for her children's verse and short stories and as author of the words of the popular hymn ‘Morning Has Broken'. She won the Library Association Carnegie Medal in 1956. She died in 1965.

‘Now that you too must shortly go the way' appeared in
Sonnets and Poems
(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1918). ‘Easter Monday' appeared in
First and Second Love
(London: Michael Joseph, 1947).

Gilbert Frankau
was born in London in 1884 and was educated at Eton. He worked in the family tobacco business, and spent two years travelling around the world between 1912 and 1914. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the 9th East Surrey Regiment (‘The Gallants') in October 1914, and transferred to the 107th Brigade of the Royal Field Artillery in March 1915. He served at Loos, Ypres and the Somme, and in Italy, but was invalided out of the army with the rank of captain in February 1918. He was a popular and prolific inter-war novelist and a squadron leader in the RAF during the Second World War. His war experiences are fictionalized in
Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant
(London: Hutchinson & Co., 1920). He died in 1954.

‘Headquarters' appeared in
The Guns
(London: Chatto & Windus, 1916). ‘The Deserter' and ‘Wife and Country' appeared in
The Judgement of Valhalla
(London: Chatto & Windus, 1918).

John Freeman
was born in Dalston, Middlesex, in 1880, the son of a commercial traveller. Educated locally in Hackney, he left school at thirteen to work as a junior clerk at the Liverpool Victoria Friendly Society, eventually rising to become a director of the same firm. He was later appointed chief executive officer in the Department of National Health and Insurance. He was awarded the Hawthornden Prize for imaginative writing in 1924, and he died five years later, in 1929.

‘Happy is England Now' appeared in
Stone Trees and Other Poems
(London: Selwyn & Blount, 1916).

Robert Frost
was born in San Francisco in 1874 and moved to New England at the age of nineteen. He spent a year at both Dartford College and Harvard University, but left to teach, farm, and write poetry. From 1912 until 1915 he lived in England, where he became a friend of Edward Thomas (q.v.); upon his return to New England he devoted himself to poetry, supporting
himself by teaching appointments at Amherst College and the University of Michigan. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his poetry in 1924, 1931, 1937 and 1943. He died in 1963.

‘Not to Keep' appeared in
New Hampshire: A Poem with Notes and Grace Notes
(London: Grant Richards, 1924).

Wilfrid Gibson
was born in Hexham, Northumberland, in 1878 and was educated locally. A published poet while still in his teens, he was a friend of Rupert Brooke (q.v.) and, with him, one of the founders of the Georgian Movement in poetry. He volunteered in 1915, but was rejected four times because of his poor eyesight. Finally accepted by the Army Service Corps, he served first as a ‘loader and packer' and later as a medical officer's clerk in Sydenham. He died in 1962.

‘Breakfast', ‘His Mate' and ‘The Question' appeared in
Battle
(London: Elkin Matthews, 1915). ‘Air-Raid', ‘Ragtime' and ‘The Conscript' appeared in
Neighbours
(London: Macmillan & Co., 1920).

Robert Graves
was born in Southwark, London, in 1895 and was educated at Charterhouse. Shortly after he left school the war broke out, and he immediately enlisted as a second lieutenant in the 3rd Battalion of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers. He saw active service on the Western Front until February 1917, when ill health resulted in his being posted for home duties in Great Britain and Ireland until his demobilization in February 1919. After a brief and unsuccessful period at St John's College, Oxford, he took up the post of Professor of English Literature at Cairo University, later moving to Majorca. He was Professor of Poetry at Oxford between 1961 and 1966. His wartime experiences are recorded in
Goodbye to All That
(London: Jonathan Cape, 1929) and
But It Still Goes On
(London: Jonathan Cape, 1930). He died in 1985.

‘It's a Queer Time' appeared in
Over the Brazier
(London: Poetry
Bookshop, 1916). ‘A Child's Nightmare', ‘A Dead Boche', ‘Dead Cow Farm', ‘The Last Post' and ‘Two Fusiliers' appeared in
Fairies and Fusiliers
(London: William Heinemann, 1917). ‘Recalling War' appeared in
Collected Poems
(London: Cassell & Co., 1938). ‘The Survivor Comes Home' appeared in
Complete Poems: Vol. 3
, ed. Beryl Graves and Dunstan Ward (Manchester: Carcanet, 1999).

Julian Grenfell
was born in London in 1888, the son of Lord Desborough, and was educated at Eton and at Balliol College, Oxford. He joined the First Royal Dragoons (The Royals) in 1910 and served as a cavalry officer in India and South Africa during the next four years. On the outbreak of the First World War he was sent to France, where he was twice mentioned in dispatches and was awarded the Distinguished Service Order. He was badly wounded by shrapnel during action near Ypres, and died in hospital in Boulogne on 30 April 1915.

‘Into Battle' appeared in
A Crown of Amaranth: Being a Collection of Poems to the Memory of the Brave and Gallant Gentlemen Who Gave Their Lives for Great and Greater Britain
(London: Erskine Macdonald, 1915).