Literary journalism and World War I

This collection of essays explores the role World War I had in the global development of literary journalism. Looking beyond the most canonical voices of the genre of the period, it draws a map of literary journalists engaged with the epistemological and ontological problems of reporting the conflict on both sides of the Atlantic. Among the primary sources included in this volume are texts by John Buchan, Will Irwin, Frans Masereel, Velona Pilcher and Eugeni Xammar.

Incorporating a wide range of international critical perspectives, this book offers a rich and complex vision of the press during the Great War. By presenting excerpts from several primary sources alongside a contextual gloss and a scholarly essay, the collection highlights the varied effects produced when literary techniques were fused with factual reportage. The primary texts selected come from neutral and warring countries alike, including the pacisfist polemics of Belgian graphic artist Frans Masereel to the bitter irony of the soldiers' own trench journals. These literary journalists bear witness to the common challenges with which writers from all nations grappled as they attempted to report on a new kind of warfare.