Explores how popular writers of adventure fiction explained the causes of war and how they created romantic and exciting images of battle to persuade young men to enlist.
Acknowledgments
Illustrations
Introduction: Only the Glory
Selling the War
At the Front
The War in the Air
Sideshows, Gallipoli, Mesopotamia, Palestine and Africa
Brave Sons of Empire and Loyal Allies
The Last of War, 1917-1918
Conclusion
Notes
MICHAEL PARIS is Professor of Modern History at the University of Central Lancashire and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He specializes in the area of war and popular culture. His most recent book is Warrior Nation: Images of War in British Popular Culture, 1850-2000.
?[A] readable study of British children's books as an ideological
tool of government. As such it will serve students of history and
popular culture as well as those pursuing study of juvenile
literature. Recommended. Lower-/upper-division undergraduates;
graduate students.?-Choice
?[M]akes a convincing case for continuity in the way that authors
of juvenile fiction, some of them war veterans themselves by 1918,
presented the Great War to British adolescents, rather than any
great cultural shift or move towards "disillusionment." As the
nature of the real war changed, a few working-class heroes appeared
in their writings, or even a few heroines as nurses and spies, and
their depictions of conflict became more violent. But the basic
themes of a good war fought by young heroes for a just cause did
not change. Further, these books continued to sell well and to be
presented as school prizes up to the outbreak of the Second World
War and even beyond. As the author concludes, British conventions
for presenting fictionalised, warfare to the young were tested by
the Great War, together with the existing stereotype of idealised
masculinity, but the war experience modified them slightly rather
than destroying them outright.?-The Journal of Military History
"ÝA¨ readable study of British children's books as an ideological
tool of government. As such it will serve students of history and
popular culture as well as those pursuing study of juvenile
literature. Recommended. Lower-/upper-division undergraduates;
graduate students."-Choice
"ÝM¨akes a convincing case for continuity in the way that authors
of juvenile fiction, some of them war veterans themselves by 1918,
presented the Great War to British adolescents, rather than any
great cultural shift or move towards "disillusionment." As the
nature of the real war changed, a few working-class heroes appeared
in their writings, or even a few heroines as nurses and spies, and
their depictions of conflict became more violent. But the basic
themes of a good war fought by young heroes for a just cause did
not change. Further, these books continued to sell well and to be
presented as school prizes up to the outbreak of the Second World
War and even beyond. As the author concludes, British conventions
for presenting fictionalised, warfare to the young were tested by
the Great War, together with the existing stereotype of idealised
masculinity, but the war experience modified them slightly rather
than destroying them outright."-The Journal of Military History
"[A] readable study of British children's books as an ideological
tool of government. As such it will serve students of history and
popular culture as well as those pursuing study of juvenile
literature. Recommended. Lower-/upper-division undergraduates;
graduate students."-Choice
"[M]akes a convincing case for continuity in the way that authors
of juvenile fiction, some of them war veterans themselves by 1918,
presented the Great War to British adolescents, rather than any
great cultural shift or move towards "disillusionment." As the
nature of the real war changed, a few working-class heroes appeared
in their writings, or even a few heroines as nurses and spies, and
their depictions of conflict became more violent. But the basic
themes of a good war fought by young heroes for a just cause did
not change. Further, these books continued to sell well and to be
presented as school prizes up to the outbreak of the Second World
War and even beyond. As the author concludes, British conventions
for presenting fictionalised, warfare to the young were tested by
the Great War, together with the existing stereotype of idealised
masculinity, but the war experience modified them slightly rather
than destroying them outright."-The Journal of Military History
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