The Great War and Modern Memory

The year 2000 marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of one of the most original and gripping volumes ever written about the First World War. Fussell illuminates a war that changed a generation and revolutionized the way we see the world. He explores the British experience on the Western Front from 1914 to 1918, focusing on the various literary means by which it has been remembered, conventionalized and mythologized. It is also about the literary dimensions of the experience itself. Fussell supplies contexts both actual and literary, for writers who have most effectively memorialized the great War as an historical experience with conspicuous imaginative and artisitc meaning. These writers include the classic memoirists Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves and Edmund Blunden, and poets David Jones, Isaac rosenberg, and Wilfred Owen. In a new introduction Fussell discusses the critical responses to his work, and the books that have influenced his writing and thinking about war. Fussell also shares the stirring experience of his research at the Imperial War Museum's Department of Documents. Fussell includes a new Suggested Further Reading List.