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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.

Table of Contents

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

About the Author

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.

Reviews

?[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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