Literary Images of Vicarious Warfare: British Newspapers and the Origin of the First World War, 1899–1914

Abstract

The literature of the First World War has become an area of study which has encompassed many diverse disciplines. Fields such as poetry (whether good or bad, personal or epic), the diaries and journals of participants (both the famous and the ordinary), autobiography (including the non-fiction and the fictional versions), short stories and novels (written by both participants and non-combatants), and letters (to and from the front) have been studied under the rubric of First World War literature. It seems almost any form of writing now can be considered ‘literature’. However, newspapers appear to remain excluded from this literary clique. This is indeed a pity, for newspapers as a historical source are unequalled in this period. They also contain within their pages all of the elements of war literature. Newspapers published poetry, mostly of the bad variety, spontaneously submitted to the local and national press during times of martial activity. Diaries, memoirs and short stories written by soldier or war correspondent observers were often serialized and read with interest. Letters to and from the front were sent to the editor and published either to condone or condemn a particular issue the newspaper had championed. The press, then, can be used to ascertain the literary perception of warfare held by contemporaries.