stacy gillis
poetry anthology in this enterprise: ‘the poetry of the First World War was perceived
asa homogeneous poetic kind from very early on in its history, and...publication
in anthologies was both cause and consequence of this way of perceiving it’.^6 An
accountofhowthefigureofthemalewarpoetcametorepresenttheFirstWorld
War in literary history is not the subject of this essay, although it will necessarily be
touched on in passing. Rather, this essay is concerned with one group of poets which
has been often excluded from our understanding of the war. I will first discuss the
gendering of literary history of the First World War, before moving on to a wider
discussion of women, war, and writing, and concluding with an account of how we
might read the women war poets in light of current theories about mourning and
within the current renaissance in First World War studies.
(En)Gendering the Literary History
of War
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••Until recently, women’s poetry has been largely absent from the literary accounts
of the First World War. The numerous poetry anthologies published both during
the war and through to the late 1970s were unanimous in their sustained cham-
pioning of a fairly small group of male poets, a ‘brotherhood of ‘‘Those who were
there’’—on the Western Front. Those who had not been there were presumed
to be incapable of understanding what the experience had been like, and what it
had meant.’^7 While the membership has fluctuated somewhat, at the centre are
Owen, Rosenberg, Brooke, and Sassoon, with Charles Sorley, Julian Grenfell, Robert
Graves, and Edmund Blunden slightly more subject to the vagaries of taste. These
anthologies have been firm in their purpose of providing a ‘voice’ for the supposedly
new kind of war waged between 1914 and 1918 and the impact on combatants, both
at war and once they returned home. As such, the anthologies serve as one more
form of memorial to the war. For example, Brian Gardner states that his anthology
of (male) war poets is ‘intended as a tribute to those who fought, and died, in the
First World War. There have been many accounts of that unparalleled tragedy, and
here is yet another: one written by the men who experienced it.’^8 This account of
the war perpetuates a myth of authenticity surrounding the male poet—one whose
voice has been authenticated through (masculine) experience. The first academic
monograph on the war poets, Johnston’sEnglish Poetry of the First World War: A
Study in the Evolution of Lyric and Narrative Form(1964), similarly drew attention
(^6) Gray, ‘Lyrics of the First World War’, 48.
(^7) Brian Gardner, ‘Introductory Note’, inidem(ed.),Up the Line to Death: The War Poets, 1914–1918
(London: Eyre Methuen, 1976), p. xx.
(^8) Ibid., p. xix.