Continuities and Disjunctions: Investigating British Poetry Anthologies of the Second World War

The article presents an analysis of the marginal cultural positioning of Britsh Second World War poetry by contrast with that of the First World War. It considers this positioning in the context both of longstanding cultural interest in historical and dramatic representations of the 1939-45 war and the extensive post-war use of war poetry in British education and commemorative practices. Taking processes of editorial selection and organization as an additional layer of meaning-making to that of the poetry itself, it briefly identifies taxonomical groupings within the large and varied corpus of war poetry anthologies published during and after the Second World War. An account of the post-war reactions to and constructions of this work is given and the article concludes with the argument that such work represents a rich, important and under-appreciated resource for the understanding of Second World War literature and culture.