Blogging Woolf

In a month and year when our country is giddily celebrating the historic election of Barack Obama as president, our friends across the pond have a different event on their minds.

They are getting ready to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the signing of the Armistice that ended World War I.

Of the five million British men and women who served in the war, only three are still alive. They are Henry Allingham, Harry Patch and William Stone, and they will lead the country in two minutes of silence on Nov. 11, in honor of those who have died in war.

The BBC has a special Web page and programs devoted to the 90th anniversary, along with information about artists and poets from WWI. And the Imperial War Museum in London is the site of a year-long exhibition to commemorate the anniversary.

The museum was also the site of the November 2005 launch of The War Poets series, edited by noted war poet writer Jean Moorcroft Wilson and published by Cecil Woolf Publishers of London.

That fall, just in time for Armistice Day, four volumes in the series were published. Another four came out the following November.

This year, Cecil Woolf Publishers has released several more. They include People’s Poetry of World War One by Phil Carradice, and Trench Songs of the First World War, selected and edited by John Press. These two soft cover volumes are the twelfth and thirteenth in the series.

Five of the volumes in the series are reviewed in the Camden New Journal. You can also read more about them on the Web site of the War Poets Association. Just search on Cecil Woolf.

Other titles in the series, which is billed as “The Lives, Works and Times of the 20th Century War Poets,” include:

• Richard Aldington: The Selected War Poems
• Richard Perceval Graves: Changing Perceptions: Poets of the Great War
• Anne Powell: Alun Lewis: A Poet of Consequences
• Alan Byford: Edmund Blunden and the Great War: Recollections of a Friendship
• John Press: Sidney Keyes
• Christopher Saunders: Edward Thomas: All Roads Lead to France
• John Press: Charles Hamilton Sorley
• Merryn Williams: T.P. Cameron Wilson
• Dominic Hibberd: Harold Monro and Wilfrid Gibson: the Pioneers

For a full list of these and other books from Cecil Woolf Publishers, as well as details about how to order them, click here.

All of the monographs are available directly from Cecil Woolf Publishing, 1 Mornington Place, London NW1 7RP, UK, Tel: 020 7387 2394 (or +44 (0)20 7387 2394 from outside the UK). Prices range from £4.50 to £9.95. 

Cecil Woolf is also planning an addition to his Bloomsbury Heritage series on the topic of Virginia Woolf’s Likes and Dislikes, and anyone can contribute to the project. Search her letters and diaries for the things she liked and those she didn’t, then post them here.