World War I in literature Literature in World War I is generally thought to include poems , novels and drama ; diaries , letters , and memoirs are often included in this category as well . Although the canon continues to be challenged , the texts most frequently taught in schools and universities are lyrics by Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen ; poems by Ivor Gurney , Edward Thomas , Charles Sorley , David Jones and Isaac Rosenberg are also widely anthologised . General . The spread of education in Britain in the decades leading up to Word War I meant that both the British soldiers and the British public , at all levels of society , were literate . As a result , British authors , both professional and amateur , were prolific during and after the war and found a market for their works . Literature was produced throughout the war but it was in the late 1920s and early 1930s that Britain had a boom in publication of war literature . The next boom period was in the 1960s , when there was renewed interest in the First World War after two decades focussed on the Second . Poetry . Over two thousand published poets wrote about and during the war . However , only a small fraction are still known today , while several that were popular with contemporary readers are now obscure . An orthodox selection of poets and poems emerged during the 1960s , which often remains the standard in modern collections and distorts the impression of World War I poetry . This selection tends to emphasise the horror of war , suffering , tragedy and anger against those that wage war . In the early weeks of the war , British poets responded with an outpouring of literary production . Rudyard Kipling ' s " For all we have and are " aroused most comment . Robert Bridges , Poet Laureate , contributed a poem " Wake Up , England ! " at the outbreak of war that he later wished suppressed . , John Masefield , who later succeeded Bridges as Poet Laureate , wrote " August , 1914 " , a poem that was widely admired . Wilfred Owen was killed in battle ; but poems created at the front did achieve popular attention after the war ' s end . e . g . , Dulce Et Decorum Est , Insensibility , Anthem for Doomed Youth , Futility and Strange Meeting . In preparing for the publication of his collected poems , Owen tried to explain : The poem In Flanders Fields , by John McCrae , continues to be one of the most popular wartime poems in Canada , and has achieved a status where it is recognized as one of the country ' s most notable unofficial symbols . From the war itself until the late 1970s , the genre of war poetry was almost exclusively reserved for male poets . This was based on an idea of an exclusive authenticity limited to the works of those who had fought and died in the war . It excluded other forms of experience in the war , such as mourning , nursing and the home front , which were more likely to be experienced by other demographics such as women . There were over 500 women writing and publishing poetry during World War I . Examples of poems by female poets include Teresa Hooley ' s " A War Film " , Jessie Pope ' s " War Girls " , and Mary H . J . Henderson ' s " An Incident " . In addition to giving women greater access to work , the war also gave women greater artitic freedom and space to express their identities as artists . Novels . A common subject for fiction in the 1920s and 1930s was the effect of the war , including shell shock and the huge social changes caused by the war . From the latter half of the 20th century onwards , the First World War continued to be a popular subject for fiction , mainly novels . Contemporary . Alfred Noyes is often portrayed by hostile critics as a militarist and jingoist despite being a pacifist in life . In 1913 , when it seemed that war might yet be avoided , he published a long anti - war poem called " The Wine Press " . During World War I , Noyes was debarred by defective eyesight from serving at the front . Instead , from 1916 , he did his military service on attachment to the Foreign Office , where he worked with John Buchan on propaganda . This included work as a literary figure , writing morale - boosting short stories and exhortatory odes and lyrics recalling England ' s military past and asserting the morality of her cause . These works are forgotten today apart from two ghost stories , " The " Lusitania " Waits " and " The Log of the " Evening Star " " , which are still occasionally reprinted in collections of tales of the uncanny . Erich Maria Remarque ' s best - selling book about the First World War , " Im Westen nichts Neues " ( " " All Quiet on the Western Front " " ) , was translated into 28 languages with world sales nearly reaching 4 million in 1930 . and the award - winning film which was based on that work of fiction have had a greater influence in shaping public views of the war than the work of any historian . John Galsworthy ' s perspective was quite different in 1915 when he wrote Remarque ' s book was partly based on Henri Barbusse ' s 1916 novel , " Under Fire " . Barbusse was a French journalist who served as a stretcher - bearer on the front lines and his book was very influential in its own right at the time . By the end of the war it had sold almost 250 , 000 copies and read by servicemen of many nations . British novelist Mary Augusta Ward wrote generally pro - war novels , some at the request of United States President Theodore Roosevelt , which nevertheless raised questions about the war . These include " England ' s Effort " ( 1916 ) , " Towards the Goal " ( 1917 ) , " Missing " ( 1917 ) , " The War and Elizabeth " ( 1917 ) and " Fields of Victory " ( 1919 ) . Some pre - existing popular literary characters were placed by their authors in World War I - related adventures during or directly after the war . These include Tom Swift ( " Tom Swift and His Aerial Warship " in 1915 and " Tom Swift and His Air Scout " in 1919 ) , Sherlock Holmes ( " His Last Bow " , 1917 ) and Tarzan ( " Tarzan the Untamed " , 1920 ) . Post - war . A . P . Herbert was one of the first combatants to publish a novel about the war , " The Secret Battle " ( 1919 ) . This was followed in subsequent years by other , including the " Spanish Farm Trilogy " — " Sixty - Four " ( 1925 ) , " Ninety - Four " ( 1925 ) and " The Crime at Vanderlynden ' s " ( 1926 ) — by Ralph Hale Mottram , " Death of a Hero " ( 1929 ) by Richard Aldington , " The Middle Parts of Fortune " ( 1929 ) by Frederic Manning , " The Patriot ' s Progress " ( 1930 ) by Henry Williamson and " Winged Victory " ( 1934 ) by Victor Maslin Yeates . " Parade ' s End " by Ford Madox Ford was a highly - acclaimed tetralogy of novels , published between 1924 and 1927 , that covers the events of World War I and the years around it from the viewpoint of a government statistician who becomes an officer in the British Army during the war . The novels were based on Ford ' s own experience in the war , after he had enlisted at age 41 . May Sinclair volunteered with the Munro Ambulance Corps in 1914 and published her account of the front in Belgium as " A Journal of Impressions in Belgium " ( 1915 ) . She followed this with three novels about the war , " Tasker Jevons " ( 1916 ) , " The Tree of Heaven " ( 1917 ) and " The Romantic " ( 1920 ) . Journalist Evadne Price wrote a semi - biographical novel " " ( 1930 ) about ambulance drivers based on women she had interviewed . W . Somerset Maugham ' s collection of short stories , " " ( 1928 ) , was based on the author ' s experience with British Intelligence during the war . It was loosely adapted into the film " Secret Agent ( 1936 ) , directed by Alfred Hitchcock , and a 1991 BBC TV series . The popular literary characters Biggles and Bulldog Drummond were created by veterans of the war , W . E . Johns and H . C . McNeile respectively . Both characters served in the war and shared some their creators ' history . The Bulldog Drummond books were popular among veterans after the war . Late twentieth - century and beyond . " War Horse " ( 1982 ) by Michael Morpurgo is set in World War I and won the Whitbread Book Award for 1982 . It has been adapted into a play and film . Memoirs . Captain John Hay Beith ' s best - selling account of life in the army , " The First Hundred Thousand " , was published in 1915 and became one of the most popular books of the period . It was translated into French as " Les Premiers Cent Mille " . Due to its popularity in the United States , which was neutral at the time , Beith was transferred to the British War Mission in Washington , D . C . After the war many participants published their memoirs and diaries . The first memoirs of combatants were published in 1922 , not long after the armitice : " A Tank Driver ' s Experiences " by Arthur Jenkins and " Disenchantment " by Charles Edward Montague . These were shortly joined with " Undertones of War " ( 1928 ) by Edmund Blunden , " Good - Bye to All That " ( 1929 ) by Robert Graves , " A Subaltern ' s War " ( 1929 ) by Charles Edmund Carrington , " A Passionate Prodigality " ( 1933 ) by Guy Chapman and " Blasting and Bombardiering " ( 1937 ) by Percy Wyndham Lewis . Nurses also published memoirs of their wartime experiences , such as " A Diary without Dates " ( 1918 ) by Enid Bagnold , " Forbidden Zone " ( 1929 ) by Mary Borden and " We that Were Young " ( 1932 ) by Irene Rathbone . Theatre . Plays about World War I include :