Anthologies of British Poetry. Critical Perspectives from Literary and Cultural Studies. Ed. Barbara Korte, Ralf Schneider and Stefanie Lethbridge (Internationale Forschungen zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft, 48).

• Peter Preston

In 1917 E. B. Osborn published The Muse in Arms, an anthology of work by serving soldiers, sailors and airmen. Its object, wrote Osborn in his Introduction, was ‘to show what passes in the British warrior’s soul when, in moments of aspiration or inspiration, before or after action or in the busy days of self-preparation for self-sacrifice, he has glimpses of the ultimate significance of warfare’. Issued in November 1917, with a second edition later the same month, Osborn’s collection answered to a public demand, particularly strong during the period of the great battles of 1915-17, for poetry from the trenches.

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