Boys in Khaki, Girls in Print Women's Literary Responses to the Great War 1914-1918

by Potter, Jane

• ISBN13: 9780199279869
• ISBN10: 0199279861
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-12-08
• Publisher: Clarendon Press

Summary

Modernist texts and writings of protest have until now received most of the critical attention of literary scholars of the First World War. Popular literature with its penchant for predictable storylines, melodramatic prose, and patriotic rhetoric has been much-maligned or at the very leastignored. Boys in Khaki, Girls in Print: Women's Literary Responses to the Great War redresses the balance. It turns the spotlight on the novels and memoirs of women writers - many of whom are now virtually forgotten - that appealed to a British reading public hungry for amusement, news, and aboveall, encouragement in the face of uncertainty and grief. The writers of 1914-18 had powerful models for interpreting their war, as a consideration of texts from the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902 shows. They were also bolstered by wartime publishing practices that reinforced the sense that their books,whether fiction or non-fiction, were not simply 'light' entertainment but a powerful agents of propaganda. Generously illustrated, Boys in Khaki, Girls in Print is a scholarly yet accessible illumination of a hitherto untapped resource of women's writing and is an important new contribution to thestudy of the literature of the Great War.

Author Biography

Dr Jane Potter is Lecturer in Publishing at Oxford Brookes University and Assistant to the Archivist at Wolfson College, Oxford.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	vii
List of Illustrations	xii
Introduction	1	(8)
Before the Lamps Went Out: The Social and Literary Background of the Great War	9	(43)
`Is Your Best Boy Wearing Khaki?': Publishing and Propaganda	52	(36)
`Putting Things in Their Right Places': The War in Romance Novels	88	(62)
`I Alone Am Left to Tell the Tale': Memoirs by Women on Active Service	150	(75)
Appendix 1: Items on a Boer War Theme in The Girl's Own Paper, The Girl's Realm, and The Lady's Realm, 1899--1902	225	(2)
Appendix 2: Schedule of Wellington House Literature	227	(2)
Appendix 3: Biographies of Main Authors	229	(7)
Bibliography	236	(17)
Index	253