The Oxford Handbook of British and Irish War Poetry

Thirty-seven chapters, written by leading literary critics from across the world, describe the latest thinking about twentieth-century war poetry. The book maps both the uniqueness of each war and the continuities between poets of different wars, while the interconnections between theliteratures of war and peacetime, and between combatant and civilian poets, are fully considered. The focus is on Britain and Ireland, but links are drawn with the poetry of the United States and continental Europe.The Oxford Handbook feeds a growing interest in war poetry and offers, in toto, a definitive survey of the terrain. It is intended for a broad audience, made up of specialists and also graduates and undergraduates, and is an essential resource for both scholars of particular poets and for thoseinterested in wider debates about modern poetry. This scholarly and readable assessment of the field will provide an important point of reference for decades to come.

Tim Kendall is Professor of English Literature at the University of Exeter. He has published a book of poems, Strange Land, with Carcanet, and full-length studies of Muldoon and Plath. From 1994 until 2003 he edited the international poetry magazine, Thumbscrew. His latest monograph is Modern English War Poetry (OUP, 2006).