Commemorative Modernisms Women Writers, Death and the First World War by Alice Kelly

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Alice Kelly shines a light on Women writing about the First World War and using that light to explore how the experiences, especially the experience of mass death, shaped the development of literary modernism.

The selection of women Kelly engages with include professional writers, in their published and “private” voices, and those writing in a purely private capacity – predominately letter and journal writing nurses.

There is a different voice from the male “war writers” - the whole experience of “the war” is encountered differently – this was still a society that sharply policed the roles of men and women – even if there was some opening up of opportunities for women in workplaces due to the absence of men sent to the front.

Some of the trends Kelly draws out were evident before the war but they clearly get turbo-charged but the intensity of experience the war years provided.

It is an academic work but the dryness that can result from that is relieved by the richness of the personalities of the women under consideration.