The Penguin Book of First World War Stories

The Penguin Book of... (Penguin Classics)

by Barbara Korte (Editor), Ann-Marie Einhaus (Assistant Editor), Richard Aldington (Contributor)

An illuminating anthology of World War I fiction by some of England's best- known writers

This new collection of short stories about World War I features works by such famous British authors as Joseph Conrad, W. Somerset Maugham, Arthur Conan Doyle, John Buchan, Rudyard Kipling, D. H. Lawrence, John Galsworthy, Radclyffe Hall, Katherine Mansfield, Robert Graves, Muriel Spark, and Julian Barnes. Written during the war and after, these stories illustrate the impact of the Great War on British society and culture, as well as the many ways in which short fiction contributed to the literature of that time period.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, War, World War I, Classics, Historical Fiction, Anthologies

401 pages, Paperback

First published October 25, 2007

Reviews

[Tim Pendry · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well curated Penguin Classics collection of 25 short stories linked to the British experience of the First World War. It ranges from Machen's overrated romantic supernatural account of the Angel of Mons to late twentieth century works by Muriel Spark, Robert Grossmith and Julian Barnes.

Roughly a third of the stories are by the big guns of English literature, not always their best work in some cases, although each adds something, but the bulk are by contemporary writers or writers 'processing' the experience in the decade or so following it.

Literature is not reality. A lot of guff can be spoken or written about art expressing some higher truth when what it often does is create a barrier between us and reality especially when it is a reality which we can never hope to experience.

Most of the stories are, therefore, not always very useful in describing the actual lived experience of war for most but they are effective in taking facets of the whole bringing them into focus as part of a cultural experience that helped to define 'Britishness/Englishness' to subsequent generations.

One of the dissonances between 'culture' as it unfolded after 1918 and the war itself is that the war became a set of negatives that obscured the enthusiasm for war and victory at the time and only one story reminds us that for most of the war for most men it was actually quite dull.

Literature is not interested in the dull. It concentrates on incident (like news bulletins), amplifies them, mythologises them and then spreads them further as interpretations that then become the received ideas of a society. So this book is about culture and not history.

Having noted that (and so long as we do not confuse interwar culture or the culture of the baby boomers with the reality of events between 1914 and 1918), then this is an excellent compendium of artistic reflections on the human and specifically British experience of war.

The most obviously authentic are those from men and women who experienced the conflict directly. Secondarily from those who observed the effects on their own generation after the war. The least, self-evidently, are those who merely imagine the past.

In the first case, you have Aldington, Borden, Graves, Holtby, Somerset Maugham (as a spy), Montague, Sapper and Walpole. In all of these, except Holtby who embeds her story in a later period, stories are grounded in some military experience even when detached from reality.

Somerset Maugham stands out, of course. Graves looks back in 1962 to have an old soldier backing the nuclear deterrent as a means to peace. Borden captures something of the exhausted adrenalin high of dealing with death and destruction as a nurse albeit in a mannered modernist idiom.

The others all add something to the picture but the most interesting from a psychological point of view (though perhaps not from a literary point of view) is Hugh Walpole's attempt to describe the loss of the self in some of those who came back from the trenches.

Walpole's attempt is not as successful in portraying disassociation in 'Nobody' as perhaps we might have liked but at least he was making a serious effort at describing something extremely hard to express in the conformist society of the interwar upper middle classes.

The second category includes older literary lions trying to come to terms with the scale of the tragedy and its moral complications (Kipling, Conrad, Galsworthy, Buchan) or maintain a propaganda line from duty (Machen, Conan Doyle).

Kipling is as masterful as you would expect. Conrad raises an uncomfortable moral choice, albeit in a somewhat stilted way, that showed how traditional morality might come under pressure in a total economic war but the most moving, because understated, entry is from Galsworthy.

His simple tale simply told, from the point of view of a school teacher, of a young farmworker who lies about his age to fight, 'marries' his local love and then deserts the trenches when he finds out she is pregnant. When he is found out, he is, of course, shot.

The boy is placed into the machine of war in part because the schoolteacher failed to blow the whistle on his underage status before the kid was ready to make serious judgments and that war machine had no choice but to shoot him once he was in its grip.

Galsworthy was one of the patriots but changed his attitude to the war over time. This 1927 story may express some of his own guilt at not acting with more circumspection at the time.

Buchan too has a nice story about discovering that his character's 'loathly opposite' in the German intelligence system was far from what he expected when they met. A repeated theme (Buchan, Graves, Aumonier, A. W Wells) is that the 'other side' were not in fact monsters but like us.

DH Lawrence provides one of the odder but excellent stories in the collection 'Tickets, Please' (1919) which is very much about the liberation of women from social constraints because of the war effort. From a male perspective, he delivers a fascinatingly castrating sexual horror story.

The role of women is rightly not neglected. A third or so of the stories are primarily about women or where women play a significant role and not one of these stories is some politically correct makeweight. Every single one has its purpose in the whole.

Slightly less than a third are by women and not all the women want to write about women. One who does is unsurprisingly Radclyffe Hall. Her story is, in fact, somewhat ridiculous in the round but, as with Walpole, the literary failure hides a psychological success about war and lesbian aspiration.

The effect on many women of the First World War is now well understood but stories like those by Mary Borden, Radclyffe Hall and Winifred Holtby all express the degree to which the end of the war was experienced as a loss. The war was a defining moment for women as much as men.

As to the women who can write about men, Katherine Mansfield (the only writer to get two entries) produces one of the few examples (surprisingly) in the book of intense grief expressed in a very small and hopeless and perhaps repressedly cruel and angry way.

Grief is, of course, present elsewhere but, being English, so much of it is expressed elliptically, drawn out and unassuaged,with a reluctance to share it. If there is one national characteristic discreetly present throughout, it is the national preference for Stoic silence.

The only example in the book of outright cynical humour - and brutally sharp it is too - is the playwright Brighouse's 'Once a Hero' which is a satire on the cultural appropriation of war heroes by 'society'. Maybe Sapper's 'Captain Meyrick - Company Idiot' might fall into the same category.

Stacy Aumonier is one of the wider group of lesser known writers who helped shape our cultural responses to the war and he provides what I think is the best story in the collection 'Them Others'. What is remarkable about it is that it was published as early as 1917.

Burning with a fundamental humanity and an authentic feeling for working class life and sentiment, it has a simple soul of a mother coming to terms with not only the war but the fact that on the other side other mothers had sons in as dangerous a position as her own.

The central fact is that this working class family had had pre-war German neighbours who had become friends and so could feel a common sympathy with them as fellow human beings - it is why I made a point of not abandoning my Russian friends as we sank into a Russophobic swamp.

This leaves us with the post-Second World War responses to the First World War. Authenticity is replaced with literariness. One feels a touch of grief at the arrival of men and women who are telling tales as part of a mythology already established rather that being at its creation.

The one dreadful, almost embarrassing, story is Muriel Spark's 1975 story 'The First Year of My Life' which, no surprise, appeared in the 'New Yorker'. It is snide, too-too-clever, obvious and rather stupid and best passed over in silence.

The remaining three stories include two genre tales (a mystery story set in the trenches and ghost story) by Anne Perry and Robert Grossmith which both earn their place by being well written and indicative of how the war enters modern genre fiction today.

The final entry is Julian Barnes' 1995 tale of an elderly woman obsessively 'remembering' (as we are told we must do) yet aware that some day the remembering may end. A well crafted tale, it has its point but one soon wants to get out from under the mythos and go back to the original.

I suppose I am suspicious of 'literature' distant from its time and place unless it presents itself as genre fiction (the honest historical romance in one direction and the science fiction space opera in the other). This collection helps to confirm that prejudice but with caveats.

First of all, all testimonies and memories are flawed. This is just part of the human condition. Second, literature (the artistic interpretation of the world through language) may be invention but it can reach into processes and situations hidden during the ordinary business of living.

While things are happening, these processes and situations tend to be reduced to 'stories', tools for immediate ends, and when things are no longer in the memory of anyone, they become mythologised and detached from the truth of that time they represent.

There is an intermediate period during which 'writers' are able to process their past experiences and convey some aspect of them that will resonate with others and which can be passed down the generations.

There are exceptions - Kipling, Lawrence and Aumonier spring to mind and Walpole and Mansfield still strike while the iron is hot in 1921/1922 - but the best and most authentic literary expressions of a traumatic event seem to come within ten or perhaps twelve years of its ending.

Thus, in this collection, the most interesting material tends to come from people 'processing' after the events they experienced, but not so long after that literary invention starts to take over and the formation of the mythos is replaced by a framework of expectations that define the mythos.

Anything written after about 1928/1930 starts to look consciously literary, either moving well away from events during the war (sometimes to good effect in the stories by Holtby and Barnes) or using an established mythos as backdrop to a 'story' without the actual experience of, say, Sapper.

There is a useful, sensible and mercifully short and unacademic introduction and, curiously, detailed maps of the Western Front and glossaries as well as good notes to the stories and biographical summaries of the authors. Discovering Aumonier alone made the reading worthwhile.

[Smiley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve decided to read these 25 short stories depicting the impact of World War I, the Great War, by their writers with different stature and fame, thinking it would be boringly formidable if I simply keep reading respectively from No. 1 (Arthur Machen, ‘The Bowmen’) to No. 25 (Julian Barnes, ‘Evermore’). One of the reasons is that I prefer reading stories written by those familiar writers (as listed on my mind from my reading exploration) whose style and wording should encourage my understanding and assure reading enjoyment. Such writers totaling 8 names (one third) in the book’s contents are as follows: Katherine Mansfield, Joseph Conrad, Arthur Conan Doyle, W. Somerset Maugham, Rudyard Kipling, D.H. Lawrence, Robert Graves, and Muriel Spark, that is, there’re still 16 ones I’ve never read their stories or books before. However, some ring a bell because I’ve known these writers vaguely: John Buchan, John Galsworthy, Hugh Walpole, and Julian Barnes.

The stories categorized into 4 thematic sections: ‘Front’, ‘Spies and Intelligence’, ‘At Home’ and ‘In Retrospect’ would help its readers themselves decide with which section and story to start. As for me, my first three choices of reading Katherine Mansfield, ‘The Fly’, Joseph Conrad, ‘The Tale’ and Arthur Conan Doyle, ‘His Last Bow’ were a bit disappointing so I read the others at random and took notes of my reading order from No. 4-25; therefore, I found reading the following, selected only one story from each section, touching and enjoyable, that is, Robert Graves, ‘Christmas Truce’ (No. 7), A.W. Wells, ‘Chanson Triste’ (No. 16), John Buchan, ‘The Loathly Opposite’ (No. 17) and D.H. Lawrence, ‘Tickets, Please’ (No. 19).

Indeed, Robert Graves has long been one of my admirable writers since I read his fantastic autobiography “Goodbye to All That”. A few years ago I first read this “Christmas Truce” obviously based on a World War I setting where he himself served as a captain in the Royal Welch Fusiliers in his “Complete Short Stories” (Penguin, 2008) and found it wonderfully hilarious. I think I’d reread it whenever I miss him. The story wonderfully suggests mutual friendship at war exchanged from such a friend side to a foe one, in other words, both sides were fellow human beings ready to be friends to the extent that, eventually, their commanders, Captain Pomeroy and Major Coburg, agreed to have a temporary Christmas truce and both sides had a good time for boxing bouts, dinner and amazingly “… they laughed like crows together.” (p. 323)

[Woody Chandler · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a recommendation by one of our local librarians, which initially brought my attention to it. I am a US Navy Gulf War I vet who served aboard the USS Normandy (CG-60) as a plankowner. I became deeply immersed in WWII lore for an extended time & finally became satiated with it.

At some point, having had both grandfathers as a part of WWI, I began to take a greater interest in that conflict. Here is some food for thought - the US entered WWI on 06 April 1917, so while I was reading this book, it had been just over 100 years since that anniversary! Think of all that has occurred in the space of that century. It is mind-boggling.

The well-curated anthology is broken into four (4) sections - Front; Spies and Intelligence; At Home and In Retrospect. The most harrowing stories come, naturally, in "Front" but surprisingly followed by "In Retrospect" in which the ripple effect is felt well after the end of the war on 11 November 1918. "Company" & "Evermore" may have had the greatest effect on me and they were written fairly contemporarily (1989 & 1995, respectively).

The latter has a line: "Might there not be, at some point in the first decades of the twenty-first century, one final moment, lit by evening sun, before the whole thing was handed over to the archivists?" I hope not. My grandfathers are long deceased as is my father and his brother (my uncle) & while I have toured the Normandy beachheads repeatedly, I have yet to see Flanders' Fields.

I enjoyed (is that the correct verb?) this anthology so much that I have now requested its companion volume of poetry from the library.

A couple of last thoughts: 1. Be prepared for a LOT of footnotes. I was able to gloss over many of them as a veteran who speaks the lingo, but not all of them. It can make for slow(er) reading. 2. The three maps of The Western Front at the back of the book are really fascinating. 3. I want to read Robt. Laurence Binyon's poem, "To the Fallen" at both Memorial Day & Veterans' Day.

[Ben Truong · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Penguin Book of First World War Stories is an anthology of twenty-five entries co-edited by Barbara Korte and Ann-Marie Einhaus. These twenty-five short stories are written by mainly British authors both famous and not so much about the experiences of the Great War both during and afterwards.

For the most part, this collection of short stories was written and constructed rather well. Editors Korte and Einhaus have assembled twenty-five wonderful short stories about the Great War – both during and after the war. Well-known authors and more obscure ones nicely balance this anthology with different viewpoints and talents.

This anthology is divided into four sections: "Front" (9 stories), "Spies and Intelligence" (3 stories), "At Home" (6 stories), and "In Retrospect" (7 stories), which neatly divides each story taking place either at the front line, away from the battlefield at home, and the aftermath of the war, which is just as harrowing.

Like most anthologies there are weaker contributions and The Penguin Book of First World War Stories is not an exception. Granted that a couple of these stories are written better than other – comparatively speaking, but it is only a singular experience – a British one. Granted they were a major player in the Great War, but it would have been nice to have a more worldly view as it was the first war that the world participated in.

This particular edition contains an introduction by Barbara Korte, which examines the genre of War literature – in particular to the First World War and how these stories impacted the world at the time. Additionally, there is a suggested reading list, copious and valuable notes on the text, maps, a list of places of the Western Front, glossary, military abbreviations, and biographies.

All in all, The Penguin Book of First World War Stories is a wonderful, albeit limited, collection of war literature – in particular the First World War.

[Maggie Desbaillets · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think my low review is due in part to the fact that I am not a huge fan of war stories. I knew this going in to this collection, and I think what I really gained from it was a view into how people who lived through the war perceived it at different moments in the 19th century. From a purely historical point of view, the stories were very enlightening, as I saw a depth of experience that you just can't get from reading nonfiction. However, none of the stories blew me away, and frankly many of them I thought were quite boring. There were a few that had some profound themes -- honor, grief, remembrance -- that made them interesting; however, I likely will not recall most of the stories nor return to them unless for historical study.

[Mike Kanner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anthologies are always tricky to review because they are not by one author, and the stories may not all be to your liking.

Korte's selected stories ranged from those published during the war to those published decades later, letting you see how views about the war changed as it became more distant. Instead of organizing them chronologically, she chose to organize them into four topics: Front, Spies and Intelligence, At Home, and In Retrospect.

The book is recommended for those interested in how the War has been portrayed in literature, but do not want to read novels about the conflict.

[Ian McAuley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interestingly, this collection of short stories was edited by Barbara Korte, a professor in English literature at the University of Freiburg, Germany. There are a wide variety of stories, separated into four sections: 'Front', 'Spies and intelligence', 'At Home' and 'In Retrospect'.

Some are by famous writers, some by those less known. Some were written during the war, others decades after. This collection provides a well-rounded view of the literature. However, some stories are more interesting historically and sociologically for what they say about the war and varied attitudes towards it, rather than being the best literature - which is why I rated this book as a '3'. Some stories don't leap off the page, and I abandoned and skipped over some of them.

The stories that stood out for me were:
- 'Victory.' The armistice is declared and the reaction of the war weary soldiers isn't as expected.
- 'Chanson Triste'. Frontline soldiers from opposite sides share their love of literature in no-mans land, but with a tragic twist.
- 'The Loathly Opposite' (John Buchan). Code-breakers on opposite sides joust intellectually during the war and then encounter each other afterwards.
- 'Them others'. An ordinary couple in London have to cope with their beloved son going missing on the front, while also wondering about what happened to the sons of their former German neighbours who would be fighting for the other side.
- 'Told by the Schoolmaster' (John Galsworthy). A domestic drama in a rural village ends up in tragedy for a young man who has signed up while underage.
- 'Nobody'. A solider returns from the war traumatised, but finds redemption in charitable work.
- 'Christmas Truce' (Robert Graves). A classic short story about not one, but two, Christmas truces during the war.

A couple of stories which I didn't like, which were by famous writers:

'-His Last Bow' (Arthur Conan Doyle). Published in 1917, patriotic but poor. The only story I've ever read by this author that I didn't like.
- 'TIckets, please' (DH Lawrence). Well written but the denouement is unlikely and somewhat hysterical. Something about this story just irritated me!

[Zain · Rating 3 out of 5]

'Now I know you will never be improved, but I love you dearly - all of you, not a bit of you. Life simply isn't long enough for all I'm going to see!'
- Hugh Walpole, 'Nobody'

It is hard to rate short story collections, and even harder when it's an anthology. Some of them were good, some of them were ok, none were bad, and few blew me away. I just think it was too long, and maybe some stories could've been cut.

These were my favorites:
1) A.W. Wells, 'Chanson Triste'
2) Stacy Aumonier, 'Them Others'
3) D.H. Lawrence, 'Tickets, Please'
4) Hugh Walpole, 'Nobody
5) Robert Grossmith, 'Company'

[Jo · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5
An illuminating collection of WW1 short stories read for a course. I haven’t studied the poetry of this time or that period of history so found it very interesting. We covered most of them in detail in two hour sessions and the tutor gave lots of useful information. The group are all keen readers so we had some good discussions. The only section that wasn’t dealt with was the espionage one which many are keen to come back to. I had no firm favourites but ‘blind’ resonated the most. It was fascinating finding the links between stories, some were written from experience and others are propaganda. They were all good examples of Hemingway’s dictum that short stories are like icebergs with 80% implied.

[Becca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having read several excerpts for one of my classes, I think that this book is a really beautiful collection of short stories from all different experiences throughout WWI. Split into the four sections (Front, Spies and Intelligence, At Home, and In Retrospect), you get a nice grasp on how the conflict effected everybody but in different ways. Big fan of the 'Penguin Collections' books.

[Lina M · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most of the short stories included in this book are painful, exciting and interesting to read. The different authors represent different topics such as the front, nurses, and WWI in retrospect.

My favorite story from this short story collection was 'Blind' by Mary Borden.

[Russell James · Rating 5 out of 5]

A 5 minus rather than a full 5-star, but a superb anthology, well presented and with almost no duds. In a book this size that's a big achievement. Well done, you German editors!

[Mat Wheatley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Few really good stories but some really shite ones too, worth a read tho

[M Chavez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sadly, some of the best poetry is produced in such horrible events. Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen where Byron and Blake reincarnated!

[Manish · Rating 3 out of 5]

This anthology is strictly a British one. Only the British experience of the war is captured here. Divided into four sections namely – Front, Spies & Intelligence, At Home and In Retrospect, the collection provided some interesting perspectives on the Great War that were new to me.

Julian Barnes for instance writes: “She hated Hitler’s war for diminishing the memory of the Great War, for allotting it a number, the mere first among two. And she hated the way in which the Great War was held responsible for its successor”

John Galsworthy’s “Told by a schoolmaster” was another moving piece of fiction. Love for the motherland makes a 16 year old sign up for the war by lying about his age, fathers a child in between, comes home to be with his love during her labour; only to be arrested and eventually shot for placing the love for his wife and baby above the love for his motherland.” A wonderful piece to be reminded of the fact that it’s the anonymous people who bring in gravitas to our world.

[Marjanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a collection of short stories written about WWI, and I wish I could give it a 3.5 stars. I liked that the stories were divided up into four sections: Front, Spies and Intelligence, At Home, and In Retrospect. Primarily I picked up this book because I like history and it is too easy to forget WWI, it always seems to get over shadowed by more recent conflicts. My favorite story was "Blind" by Mary Borden, however there were several that I liked and almost all of them were interesting. Most readers would probably recognize at least one of the authors in this collection. I liked the different perspective (all the stories are British) and it really made me realize how much war has changed.

[Aravind P · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good collection of First world war stories, gives a good glimpse of the war that was believed to be the end of all wars. The study and cultural representation of Great war could be considered as the beginning of anti-war movements.

[Becky · Rating 3 out of 5]

as with any collection of short stories the quality of these varies. Some are brilliant, beautiful and moving, some are less wonderful. Worth reading the collection, if only to contrast those written by combatants and those written by later authors.

[deni Tomgirl · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating anthology, just read the authors I was most familiar with as very heavily requested. So will be ordering it again. Some of my favourites were as I say by authors I was familiar with, and I liked the way the book was split into sections.

[Carolyn Fagan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent! Read as background for WWI book group at my public library.

[Robert White · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short stories; -- some excellent, some good, some OK