Modernism, Material Culture and the First World War

Shifts the scholarly conversation on modernism and war from shell shock to material culture

Provides the first book-length study of the material culture of the First World War through the lens of modernist literature
Rethinks the relationship between modernism and armed conflict in tangible terms by exploring how the things of war helped shape modernism
Offers an alternative to familiar accounts of modernism and shell shock
Explores canonical and lesser-known authors from Britain, Europe and the colonial world to cover a wide range of war experiences
Turns to unexpected and newly discovered print artefacts from the modernist archives, including trench newspapers, shop signs, travel guides and other sources at the margins of the canon

What did modernist writers make of the things of war? Often studied for its fascination with the shell-shocked mind, modernist literature is also packed with more tangible traces of the First World War, from helmets, trench art and tombstones to shop signs, military newspapers and leaflets dropped from airplanes. Modernism, Material Culture and the First World War asks what experimental writers read into these objects and how the conflict prompted a way of thinking of their writings as objects in their own right. Ranging from 1914 to the early 1940s, the chapters in this book weave together prose and poems by Guillaume Apollinaire, E. M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, Hope Mirrlees and Mulk Raj Anand.