EBOOK
About
Posthumous Lives explores the shifting significance of public and private efforts to commemorate British soldiers killed in World War I, as well as the less well-remembered casualties of the war, including VADs, nurses, conscientious objectors, civilians, and soldiers executed for desertion or cowardice-and the compelling hold the First World War has had on the British imagination for a century. Using the concept of the posthumous life-the attempt to extend the presence of the dead in the lives of the living-Bette London demonstrates how this idea came to shape Britain's First World War memory practices and rituals.
London draws on a diverse range of source materials-from sentimental memorabilia books commissioned by bereaved families and canonical works of literature and art by Virginia Woolf, Wilfred Owen, and Edwin Lutyens to centenary memorials and commemorative art installations-to uncover the surprising connections between memorialization practices, war writing, and modernism. Spanning the century from the middle of World War I to its centenary celebrations, Posthumous Lives illuminates, in a deeply moving narrative, how the dead are remembered to meet the shifting needs of the living.
London draws on a diverse range of source materials-from sentimental memorabilia books commissioned by bereaved families and canonical works of literature and art by Virginia Woolf, Wilfred Owen, and Edwin Lutyens to centenary memorials and commemorative art installations-to uncover the surprising connections between memorialization practices, war writing, and modernism. Spanning the century from the middle of World War I to its centenary celebrations, Posthumous Lives illuminates, in a deeply moving narrative, how the dead are remembered to meet the shifting needs of the living.