Minds at War,
Poetry and experience of the First World War

Minds at War

This long established, moving, fascinating and encyclopaedic volume includes:

• 250 poems by 80 poets, The great classic poems of the war by Owen, Sassoon, Brooke, Rosenberg, Sorley, Gurney, Thomas, Blunden, Binyon, McCrae, Grenfell, Seeger, Kipling, and others

• Poems by 26 women poets, and 40 other significant poets

• “Lost” verse that enjoyed extraordinary popularity during the First World War

• Extracts from diaries, personal letters and accounts

• Pronouncements by the media, leading commentators and politicians of the day

• An insight into poets and propaganda

• Historic photographs and cartoons

• Maps, biographies, glossary, bibliography, additional illustrations

Edited by David Roberts

It is widely used in academic institutions in Britain and America.

410 pages.

​

​

REVIEWS
“My students are devouring it faster than I can assign readings. This is a great collection.” – Thomas H Crofts, Assistant Professor of English, East Tenessee State University.

 

"I continue to be impressed by the blend of poems famous and others not well-known but illuminating, and the inclusion of citations from politicians, newspapers, etc, that will save hours of classroom explanation."  -  Christopher Armitage
Bowman and Gordon Gray Professor of English, Adjunct Professor of Peace, War and Defense, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA

​

"[With Out in the Dark,] Minds at War . . . puts many other First World War anthologies into the shade." - Gordon Hodgson, in National Association of Teachers of English web review on yahoo.co.uk

​

“Minds at War is no mere anthology but a comprehensive overview of the poetry and experience of the First World War. David Roberts sets the poems and the poets' lives within a contextual commentary which keeps the story of the war moving forward and provides as many useful historic insights as poetic." - Peter Carter, The John Masefield Society Newsletter.

 

Reviews on the Amazon Minds at War book page

S. A. Hole
5.0 out of 5 stars unbelievable book, not just all the poems but also ...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 13 December 2016
Verified Purchase
unbelievable book, not just all the poems but also all the other information about what went on in the first world war - a must read, i went from cover to cover in no time. fab book.

​

chauvesouris
5.0 out of 5 stars 
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 16 April 2015
Verified Purchase
This book sits on the table of my "reading nook." I have turned through its pages, have devoured the poetry of those who were devoured by "the first of the last wars," and each time I put the book down I am in awe of what I have read. Emotions that seem beyond words are, here, wrapped by words so well that one feels the sadness, the hurt, the fury, the emptiness, the cynicism, fatalism - and joy - whispered or shouted here. There are wars, non-stop, but this war, an explosion of political tectonic shifts, was a stagnating horror. And these poems, written by some who were killed or died before the war's end, turns history into reality.

And it helps greatly that there is "background" provided for the poems, overviews of what was happening against which the poems take place, so that one can read from start to finish or read as one does books of poems, "here and there." As I'm reading these while reading other books about WWI, this book gives jolting colors to the historical perspectives - and what colors!

Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Painful but beautifully written
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 20 March 2017
Verified Purchase
Excellent book about this terrible war. I've read a few books on World War I from the British side and this was absolutely painful to read, however it meant so much to read the poetry and read about the ability of humans to go on in the face of such great loss of loved ones.

​

​

Mrs. RP Meinke
5.0 out of 5 stars Minds at War
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 19 February 2014
Verified Purchase
I bought my copy of this book first at the Imperial War Museum some 15 yrs ago, and I was enthralled by it, as it tells so many stories and shows aspects of life on every front during the 1914-1918 War. It shows the reality also the heartache and horrors in poems, prose, letters, and pictures - photographic and art
This other copy I bought for a friend.

​

Pages 9"x 6" Paperback      ISBN 978-0-9528969-0-6     £15.99  Now £7.00 (UK only)

 

Saxon Books warpoetry.uk