The Excursion of the Dead Girls

I've been continuing my reading project but haven't found time to blog. Here's what I've been reading to coincide with Woman in Translation Month. This short story, published in 1946, is a largely autobiographical account of a school excursion by the Rhine prior to the First World War. The narrator has a vision of the excursion while in exile in the mountains of Mexico. She enters a ranch garden and hears her childhood name being called. As she observes the excursion, she reflects on the experiences of the teachers and pupils during the First World War and what she knows of their fate in the Second World War. Her lucid memory of this event perhaps comes from the fact that she was given that day an assignment to describe the excursion carefully.

The author, Anna Seghers (née Reiling, born 19 November 1900), grew up in the Rhineland city of Mainz. Her secondary education was interrupted by voluntary war service. On completing her schooling in 1920, she went to university in Heidelberg. There she met Hungarian writer László Radványi and they married in 1925. Both a Jew and a Communist, her safety was already in doubt when she began her career as a writer. Her first publication, Grubetsch (a Kafkaesque short story), was written in 1926 and published the following year. Her first novel, Revolt of the Fishermen of Saint Barbara, was published in 1928, and was concerned with the struggle of working people against injustice. Her first collection of short stories appeared in 1930. Having been arrested in 1933 by the Nazis, she fled to France and continued her literary and political activities there. Her 1939 novel, The Seventh Cross, is an account of an escape from a concentration camp. Published in 1942, it sold well in several languages and was adapted into a 1944 film directed by Austrian emigré Alfred Zinnemann. In 1941, she fled Nazi-occupied France with her family and settled in Mexico City where her husband taught in a university. In 1947, she returned from exile and settled in Berlin. She was a key member of East Germany's literary movement, writing numerous short stories and novels. Towards the end of her life, she served for several years as president of the Writers Association of the German Democratic Republic.

The narrator recalls the devastating impact the First World War had on the innocent girls on the school excursion and their young male friends. Ida, for example, “charming with her countless natural curls”, has to abandon her “loose way of life”:
“She never did get married... because her fiancé was killed in action at Verdun. This great sorrow drove her to a nursing career so that she could at least help the wounded.”
Similarly, "the dark blond, lanky youth of 17" Otto Fresenius and the narrator's friend Marianne did not marry:
“Otto Fresenius had already confided in his mother, with whom he shared his secrets, his attraction to Marianne. Since his  mother... was pleased about his happy choice, she said that... after a proper waiting time, nothing would prevent a marriage. They did get engaged but there never was a wedding because the groom was killed in action in 1914 in a battalion of students in the Argonnes.”
The two accounts pre-war (reminiscence) and post-war (history) become intermingled in the narrative in such a way that you imagine Otto in military uniform while behaving like an amorous boy:
“Now Otto Fresenius, whose belly would be torn apart by a bullet in the First World War, was the first to come down the gangplank and towards the restaurant, urged on by his love. Marianne... stretched out her free hand and placed it in his.”

Fanfare for a Tin Hat

This memoir, published in 1970, is described by the author as “a third essay in autobiography”. In his introductory chapter, he explains what he feels he needs to write in addition to his previous two memoirs, including that he wants to add a little to what he previously wrote of his service in the First World War. He described the war as “a competition in cruelty, a contest of horrors”. In later chapters, he gives an account of his first forays into writing fiction and then traces hid development as a writer. Through the writer Edward Garnett, he met Seán Ó Faoláin, an exact contemporary of his: “I became very fond of Seán” who “was foremost among the young men on whom Garnett was bestowing the avuncular benison of affection and good advice”.

The author, Eric Linklater (born 8 March 1899), though born in Wales, was the son of an Orkney man and grew up in Aberdeen. Prior to studying at the University of Aberdeen, he served as a private in the First World War with the Black Watch and was wounded at the Somme. He worked as a journalist in India from 1925 to 1927, returning to Aberdeen to serve as an assistant to an English literature professor. It was at this point in his career that he wrote his first novel. From 1928 to 1930, he worked at universities in the United States and while there his first published writings appeared. His third novel, Juan in America, was very popular. He went on to write more than 20 novels as well as many works of non-fiction. His children’s novel, The Wind on the Moon, won the Carnegie Medal in 1944.

As well as relating his own experience of the First World War, the author mentions his first cousin. His grandfather, Magnus Linklater, of the West Mainland of Orkney, had four sons. Robert, the third of these was the author’s father but the eldest was John, who due to a dispute with his parents, left home, vowing that they would never see him again. The author explains that they never saw him or heard from him again:
“No word or whisper of him reached Orkney until 1918, when a private soldier in the uniform of a New Zealand rifle regiment — a young man with a dark complexion under a big pinched and pointed khaki hat — arrived in Kirkwall and said he hoped to find some relations. His father’s name was John Linklater.”

Thy Tears Might Cease

This semi-autobiographical novel, published in 1963, is largely set between 1911 and 1921, the key period of transition from an Ireland planning for Home Rule to a country fighting for full independence. The central character, Martin Matthew Reilly, has connections both with the countryside and with Dublin; provincial Ireland speaking to him of conservative tradition while Dublin calls him to radicalism. In 2007, the author Frank Delaney included Thy Tears Might Cease in his Top 10 Irish novels, along with The Last September by Elizabeth Bowen.

The author, Michael Farrell (born 19 September 1899), grew up in Carlow. He was educated in the prestigious Roman Catholic schools of Knockbeg College and Blackrock College. He then began a medicine degree in University College Dublin. His studies were interrupted by imprisonment for subversive activities and he didn't devote his life to medicine. Instead, he focused on writing. His output was largely journalistic but he started writing his one novel at a relatively young age. His friend and fellow writer Monk Gibbon explains that “it is difficult to say when Farrell first began to write the book. It may have been in the early days of his marriage [he married in 1930] but his brother Seán believes that it might have been considerably earlier”. In 1937, with the support of another writer friend, Seán Ó Faoláin, the book was accepted for publication by a London publisher but Farrell refused to release the book and continued to edit and revise his book for many years after that. It was finally published in 1963, the year after his death.

The outbreak of the First World War is described from a provincial Irish viewpoint:
“No one at Keelard had given much thought to it when the newspapers had headlined the murder of an Austrian archduke — whatever an archduke might be — at some unpronounceable place in the Balkans. Even Miss Clare had only seen in it an opportunity to point out that there were still a few corners of the world left which were not wholly civilised. She did not dream that the mask was going to drop from the face of the whole continent. And when it did drop... the general mood in all countries was one of elation rather than despondency. That mood touched Ireland as well as everywhere else. It too resounded with cries of ‘gallant little Belgium’. It too raised its hands in horror at the crime committed against Catholic Louvain. The flags of the Allies appeared on traps and asses’ carts... the British and the Irish flags hung, crossed in amity, in Irish streets.”

Lolita

This novel, published in 1955, is largely set in New England. The central characters are Humbert Humbert, a French academic born in 1910, and Dolores Haze, born in 1935. He encounters this girl (Lolita) in 1947 in the fictional town of Ramsdale and quickly becomes infatuated with her. When her mother is knocked down and killed, he contrives to become her guardian. They travel around the country together, driving all day and staying in motels. After a year of touring the United States, Humbert takes Dolores to settle in the fictional New England town of Beardsley and enrols her in a school. On a second road trip, Dolores abandons Humbert while in a town in Texas.

The author, Vladimir Nabokov (born 22 April 1899), grew up in Saint Petersburg. He was trilingual (reading and speaking English, French and Russian) from a young age. In 1916 his first book (a poetry collection) was published. While still a schoolboy, his family, being quite aristocratic, were forced to flee to Crimea by the October Revolution. From there, they moved to England after the war. Nabokov went to university in Cambridge and graduated in 1922. In the meantime, his parents had relocated to Berlin and Nabokov followed them there after his graduation. He lived there until 1937 when he and his Jewish wife moved to France as refugees from Nazi persecution. From there, they again emigrated in 1940, this time to the United States. He obtained American citizenship in 1945 and established himself in an academic career, teaching Russian and English literature at Cornell from 1948 to 1959. Due to the financial success of Lolita, he was able to move to Switzerland and focus on writing.He died there in 1977 while working on his ninth novel in English. His corpus includes ten novels written in Russian between 1926 and 1939; nine novels in English between 1941 and 1977; numerous poetry collections; and several plays.

Humbert Humbert, the narrator of the novel, has a jealous, rather hypocritical, dislike for the boy who first had sex with Dolores while she was at camp. Several years later, he mentions the boy's activities to a neighbour, mother of Phyllis Chatfield, one of Dolores's friends:
“I remember Phyllis. Phyllis and  Camp Q. Yes, of course. By the way, did she ever tell you how Charlie Holmes debauched there his mother’s little charges?”
Mrs Chatfield’s response was one of horror:
”For shame, for shame, Mr Humbert! The poor boy has just been killed in Korea.”
There must have been thousands of villains killed in the First World War but many of them are remembered as innocent because of their deaths in action.

The Flame of the Forest

This pseudo-autobiographical novel, published in 1955, is largely set in Kolkata. The narrator has left university and is looking for work; among his jobs is contributing to an American-style weekly called Life in Technikolor. At the same time, he's pursuing an interest in Myna, a dancing girl termed ‘the Flame of the Forest’. He is torn between urban modernity with international culture and the rural traditional culture. This traditional India is impersonated by Myna; she attracts him away from Western intellect and towards mystery and myth.

The author, Sudhindra N. Ghose (born 30 July 1899), grew up in West Bengal. After studying at the University of Calcutta, he moved to Europe to study for a doctorate at the University of Strasbourg. He subsequently was a research scholar in universities in England, France, Germany and Switzerland. Alongside his studies, he served as a foreign correspondent for The Hindu newspaper from 1924. In 1931, he joined the information secretariat of the League of Nations. He fled to England with his Jewish partner in 1940 and lived there until 1957. Though he spent his entire writing career outside of India, all of his books were set in his home country. He is best remembered for his tetralogy of autobiographical fiction comprising And Gazelles Leaping (1949), Cradle of the Clouds (1951), The Vermilion Boat (1953) and The Flame of the Forest (1955). R.K. Narayan regarded the quartet as an allegorical work; a “20th-century Pilgrim's Progress”.

Myna, one of the central character's of the novel, believes that “no one dies... save on his own choice and in his own time”. “Only when a man supplicates for death then alone does he receive the visitation of Death’s messenger. And he must call out for his own dissolution not once, nor twice, but three times.“ In her mind, “death... comes to him as a solace, a benediction to him and his relations.” This prompted me to think of wounded soldiers on the battlefield who plead for death.

Children at the Shop

This novel, published in 1967, is set in Kent. Although presented as an autobiography, it is for the most part a fictional memoir. The 'shop' referred to in in the title is the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich. Although the author did live near Woolwich for some of her childhood, her depiction of a childhood in this military setting was informed more by her imagination than by experience. The narrator befriends a cadet called Myers, son of a doctor in Salisbury, and she gives an account of his experiences in the First World War: "He survived the perils of the First World War, won the D.S.O. and bar, married a daughter of a rich industrialist, eventually became a brigadier-general, and retired to the south of France." With the exception of that snippet, the account ends in August 1914 with mobilisation interrupting a family seaside vacation.

The author, Ruby Ferguson (née Ashby, born 28 July 1899) was the daughter of a Methodist minister. She grew up in Yorkshire and was educated in Bradford. Her first cousin, Spencer Ashby, of the Middlesex Regiment, was killed in action on 2 July 1916. She studied at Oxford, where she did a degree in English. She started work as a secretary in Manchester but quickly began writing as a sideline. Her first novel was published in 1926; it and most of her early output were in the crime genre. Her ninth book, the 1937 romantic novel, Lady Rose and Mrs Memmary, was her most successful novel for adults. She is best known for her Jill Crewe books, a series of nine pony-riding books primarily written for her step-granddaughters, published between 1949 and 1962.

One of the novel's minor characters is Astrid, a Danish student who lives with them in an arrangement similar to an au pair. She agrees to marry a German and the narrator is horrified:
“Golly, Astrid. Do you have to go and marry a German?”
“That I cannot help. I meet him, we loff, it is fate. He is so nize.”
“When you get married, will you have to go and live in Germany?”
“In Bremen, yes.”
The narrator later mentions that Astrid wrote from Bremen to describe her new home —
“That was in the summer of 1914 and the last we ever heard of Astrid.”

The Quest

This novel, published in 1950, is set in the midsummer of 1945. It describes the journey of seven people leaving behind the devastated city of Berlin. They set off as individuals or in pairs but come together on the same eastward road outside the city and have a common destination (a village convent). The novel draws heavily from Greek mythology (its original title was Märkische Argonautenfahrt). Their journey is towards the village of Anastasiendorf, which is effectively a New Jerusalem. The object of their quest is wisdom; a way of understanding the meaning of life when coming from such devastation.

The author, Elisabeth Langgässer (born 23 February 1899) grew up in the Rheinhessen region of west-central Germany. She was educated in Darmstadt and qualified as a primary school teacher. Her first book, a poetry collection, was published in 1924. Having taught in the region for almost ten years, she moved to Berlin in 1929. She was active as a freelance writer of poetry and drama. She was awarded the main literature prize for German women in 1932. Her first novel was published in 1936. Being half-Jewish, she had to do forced labour for much of the Second World War. Her daughter, Cordelia, considered a full Jew, survived Auschwitz and was liberated to Sweden. In 1946, her major novel, The Indelible Seal, was published after nine years of writing. Several short story collections followed. Her final novel (this one) was published in 1950, soon after she had died of multiple sclerosis. She was posthumously awarded the Georg Büchner Prize, one of the two foremost literary prizes for German literature.

The depiction of the war-ravaged country is almost apocalyptic:
“The metropolis did not end, it shredded at the periphery. It became frayed like a flag, flapping and snapping in the wind, which ought long ago to have been taken down from its pole because the cause was lost which it had served... Remains of the tank blockades were still standing at the openings of the streets, mocking themselves. Army trucks — looking as though they had been mashed by the fist of some giant who had then shoved them up the embankment onto a heap of munitions — reared their horrible, charred posteriors. Still others, like cadavers disembowelled by jackals and vultures, had been so despoiled of their original substance by the fire of battle and the beaklike blows of the artillery that their skeletons, when one bumped against them, could bring forth only a rattle. Amid the fresh deposit of miserable old rubbish scarcely a speck of earth worthy of the name  was anywhere discernible.”

Lament for Agnes

This semi-autobiographical novel, published in 1951, is largely set in Antwerp. The narrator and central character is an alter ego of the author: whereas many of the events described in the novel occurred in the author's life, there are also many deviations from autobiography. The narrator is the second child of his parents, his sister Agnes having died before he was born. When as an adolescent he meets at the cinema a young woman called Agnes and experiences love at first sight, he merged the two Agneses in his mind: “She was Agnes. She was my dead sister. I do not know how I worked out this transference of the dead child into the living girl within myself. Just because of the name?”

The author, Marnix Gijsen (né Jan-Albert Goris, born 20 October 1899) grew up in Antwerp. He studied at the local Jesuit school but was effectively expelled in 1917 due to his Flemish nationalist activities. He subsequently studied at universities in Leuven, Freiburg, Paris and London. He worked in the civil service, at first in his home city and then for the Belgian state in Brussels. His first publications were expressionist poems. From 1939 to 1954, he served in the Belgian diplomatic service in New York. The majority of his published writings are works of non-fiction. His first novel was published in 1947. It was followed by several novels set in America. In 1974 he was awarded the Prijs der Nederlandse Lettren, the most prestigious accolade in Dutch literature.

The first five chapters of the novel are set during the First World War. Chapter 6 opens with an account of the aftermath:
“The war had ended without having affected Agnes’s family or mine seriously. We stood together on the market square when the foreign flag came down from the tower and our national colours were run up. Old people, who had waited six years for their sons who were stationed away at the war, burst into tears... Peace to us simply meant greater freedom of movement.”

Stuart Little

This children's novel, published in 1945, is set in New York City. The central character is the son of ordinary human parents but has the appearance and stature of a mouse. He proves to be “a great help to his parents, and to his older brother George, because of his small size and because he could do things that a mouse can do and was agreeable about doing them”. His father thinks it important that Stuart should in his childhood be shielded from references to violence against mice, insisting that his wife tear from the nursery songbook the page about blind mice. He felt strongly that he didn't want Stuart to “grow up fearing that a farmer’s wife was going to cut off his tail with a carving knife”.

The author, E.B. White (born 11 July 1899) grew up in New York City. He studied at Cornell University and served as editor of the student newspaper. In October 1918, he joined the university's training corps in preparation for service overseas but the armistice meant he was quickly discharged before seeing any action. After university, he started work as a journalist. When The New Yorker was founded in 1925, he submitted articles and was later taken on by the magazine as a staff writer. He married the magazine's literary editor, Katharine Angell (née Sergeant), in 1929. In the same year, his first collection of poems was published. Although he went on to write a wide variety of books, he is best remembered for his three novels for children, one of which, Charlotte's Web, was a Newbury Medal finalist. In 1970, he won the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, a lifetime-achievement award for contribution to children's literature.

The adventures of the plucky central character include a naval contest on a pond in Central Park. Dressed in a sailor suit, he volunteers to go ‘to sea’, telling the owner of a model boat “I'm looking for a berth in a good ship and I thought perhaps you might sign me on. I'm strong and I'm quick”. The owner asks him to race against another boat and Stuart details how he intends to defeat the other boat:
“I'll catch the sloop broad on and rake her with fire from my forward gun”. The owner argues that he wants it to be “a boat race, not a naval engagement”. Stuart, therefore, promises to “sail [the boat] straight and true”.

Against a Darkening Sky

This novel, published in 1942, is set in a semi-rural community south of San Francisco in the 1930s. The central character, Mary Perrault, is a Scottish immigrant married to a Swiss gardener. The focus of the novel is on her parenthood and her role as friend and leader in the local community. It's an account of survival in the Great Depression and is shaped by the author's own experience and that of her friends living in the same context.

The author, Janet Lewis (born 17 August 1899), the daughter of a professor of English literature, grew up in Chicago. Her brother, Herbert, served in the army during the First World War. Her first appearances in print were contributions to a high-school literary magazine alongside those of Ernest Hemingway. She studied at the University of Chicago and as a student was an active member of the city's poetry club. Chiefly a poet, her first collection of poems was published in 1922. She had married a fellow poet, Yvor Winters, in 1926 and they moved to California when he was appointed to a position at Stanford. The two ran a literary magazine, which they had founded, from 1929 to 1931. Her first novel appeared in 1932 and she went on to write a further four novels, the most acclaimed of which is the historical novel The Wife of Martin Guerre, published in 1941.

When a friend of the family is killed, the Perraults, even though they have endured hardship, feel unaccustomed to this kind of event:
“Tragedy such as this was unreal to the Perraults, and doubly unreal since it was in the paper. The newsprint gave it, for them, the quality of fiction — something read of, not experienced. They were not able to believe that something so dreaded had actually happened to someone whom they knew. So they watched the papers through the ensuing days...”

All Alone

This children's novel, published in 1953, is set in a small mountain community in the French region of Savoie. The central character, Marcel Mabout, as a ten-year-old boy is sent from the village to the highland pasture to stay with his family's three cattle during the months of summer. The tradition in the village is each man for himself and his father warns him against having anything to do with the other boys looking after cattle in nearby mountain pastures. In his own gently courageous way he brings about a socialist revolution for the village.

The author, Claire Bishop (née Huchet, born 30 December 1898), was born in Geneva. She studied at the Sorbonne in Paris but dropped out of university to pursue hr interest in storytelling. In 1924, she opened France’s first library for children. After she married Frank Bishop, an American pianist, she moved to New York City. There she oversaw the children’s reading room of the city’s public library. Her first book for children was published in 1938 and more than 20 further books were published. Two of her books were shortlisted for the Newbery Medal: Pancake-Paris (1948) and this book.

Marcel, the young hero of the story, tells his fellow herdboy Pierre that he wants to change the behaviour of the people of the village:
“When I'm a man, I'll say to everybody in Monestier, ‘Let's do everything all together!’  He opened his arms wide in a large gesture.”
His actions convince the people:
“We began to see that there is a better way of life than each man for himself and the state for all. We began to see that if we would get together of our own accord, life might be better in Monestier.”

Bugles in the Afternoon

This historical novel, published in 1943, is set in Montana. It's an account of the devastating outcome for General George Custer's 7th Cavalry Regiment at the Battle of Little Bighorn. The background to the battle is described from the perspective of Lieutenant Kern Shafter and his one-time friend and now bitter adversary Edward Garnett. The high level of casualties due to the inept overconfidence of a general is viewed in the aftermath of the trench warfare of the First World War.

The author, Ernest Haycox (born 1 October 1899), grew up in Portland, Oregon. At the age of 16, he joined the army and served on the Mexican border in a campaign against the forces of Pancho Villa. When the United States entered the First World War, he went with the 162nd Infantry to the Western Front and served as a rifle instructor and military policeman. After the war, he studied journalism in the University of Oregon. From 1924 to 1926 he lived in New York City where he became deeply interested in the American Revolution. He made several trips to battlefields in New England and wrote eight stories and two novellas set during that era. Returning to Oregon in 1926, he decided to concentrated on writing Westerns. He went on to write more than 20 novels and numerous short stories. Several of his works were the basis of well-known films in this genre, most notable of which is Stagecoach.

Some of the scenes in the Battle of Little Bighorn resemble those of the trench warfare of the First World War:
“Bullets whipped by and scraped up flinty showers of earth. Shafter breathed from the bottom of his lungs; he heard men from the higher parapet call him forward. He reached the top and half turned to look behind him and at that moment he was struck hard in the body and he dropped to his hands and knees and was puzzled at his fall. He started to rise again and saw Lieutenant Edgerly striding toward him. He reached out for Edgerly’s hand but his own arm grew too heavy and fell back.”

The Compass Points North

This children's novel, published in 1938, is set on the English-Scottish border. It featured the same Dorset siblings (Jane, Oliver and Bill Lockett) that were introduced in her 1936 novel August Adventure. The premise of this novel is that another group of children (Fenella, Podge, Edward and Pip) are on a camping holiday on the English-Scottish border. The setting prompts an idea of a role-playing border skirmish between the Ancient Britons and the combined Picts and Scots. Being on the southern side of the frontier, they think of themselves as the Ancient Britons but long to have an ‘enemy’ to play with. Then the Lockett children arrive on the Scottish side to stay with twins Morwenna and Esme Vardon. Battle commences soon after.

The author, Mary Evelyn Atkinson (born 20 June 1899), was born in London. Her father was a schoolmaster and by 1911, his work had taken the family to Swanage, Dorset. She was educated at Leeson House, a local boarding school for girls. Her brother, Geoffrey, was killed in action in February 1917 while serving with the Indian Army in Kut, Iraq. Her first children's book was published in 1936 and a further 13 novels about the Lockett children were published in the following 25 years. In addition, she wrote a shorter series of novels about a pony called Fricka, as well as short stories. She had started her career as an author with the publication of a play in 1931 and five further one-act plays were published in the 1930s.

One of the children is taken prisoner and when released, he returns to his camp to report that “they said it was to be a war”. Jane respons to the news with determination: “They'll get ‘war’ all right! We'll avenge you. Trust us! They’d better look out.” Later Jane after a success in the battlefield reflects “what a pity it was that, not being a boy, she could not become a soldier and lead real men to victory. There was Boadicea, of course, but women didn't seem to do that sort of thing nowadays.”

Barrie & Daughter

This coming-of-age novel, published in 1943, is set in rural Kentucky in the early twentieth century. It is inspired by her own upbringing in the northeast of the state. The central character, Fern Barrie, the eldest daughter of her family, has no desire to choose either of the options her mother has in mind for her adult life: housewife or teacher. When her father decides to set up a store for the local community in competition with a store that was trading unfairly, she wants to be involved in running it. She is at the forefront of building up the business while wisely handling the conflict with the hot-headed, gun-toting owner of the rival store.

The author, Rebecca Caudill (born 2 February 1899) grew up in Harlan County in northeast Kentucky. She studied at Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia and afterwards began work as a high-school teacher. She lived most of her adult life in Urbana, Illinois. Her first book (this one) was published in 1943. Her 1949 novel Tree of Freedom, about the War of Independence, was shortlisted for the Newberry Award, while A Pocketful of Cricket was shortlisted for the Caldecott Medal in 1964. She wrote 18 books for children and several works of non-fiction, including the memoir My Appalachia. There is an annual young readers book award in Illinois named in her honour.

The later chapters of the novel are mostly concerned with the local rivalry surrounding the election (see the illustration above). The central character belongs to one of very few Democrat families in the community. He faces threats to his life from hotheaded Republicans but maintains a pacifist stance:
“I put no trust in guns... An honest education's the only defense a democracy needs, or can rightfully use, for that matter.” The author recalled in her memoir the election day atmosphere of her childhood:
“drinking, quarrelling, shooting, feuding, and generally disturbing the peace”.

I Go by Sea, I Go by Land

This novel, published in 1941, is set in England and the United States during the Second World War. It takes the form of a diary of Sabrina, the 11-year-old daughter of an English airman, who, with her younger brother, is evacuated from the family home in Sussex to stay with her aunt in New England. On hearing that their small village had been bombed, their aunt Harriet had sent a telegram: “Send children at once. Would be so delighted. Sure it is wisest.”

The author, P.L. Travers (née Lyndon Goff, born 9 August 1899), spent her early childhood in Queensland. On the death of her father in 1907, the family moved to Bowral, New South Wales. She was educated at a boarding school in Sydney. She began writing poetry and her first poems were published while she was a teenager. After leaving school, she worked for a time as an actor and dancer. She moved to England in 1924. In 1933, she began to write the book that was to make her famous — Mary Poppins. It was published the following year and she went on to write numerous books about the character.She also wrote several other novels, further poetry, a play and a few works of non-fiction.

Sabrina, the central character, describes her leave-taking from her father very much from her father's perspective:
“He took James and me and held us tightly to his sides. I could feel the bones in his leg and the bones in his arm. He looked at us for a long time as though he were remembering every bit of our faces... He said ‘Sabrina and James, there are two things that are more important than any others — Love and Courage. Will you remember?’ He said if we kept that in our minds our going to America would be easy. He said that it would be a weight off his mind to have us there while he was fighting. And that he would take care of Mother for us and as soon as the war was over we would be all together again.”

Bird of the Wilderness

This impressive coming-of-age novel, published in 1941, has the unusual setting of a German-American small town during the First World War. The small town called Parkerton is based on the the the Illinois town of Pana, where the author grew up. The central character, Bill, is the teenaged son of a Dresden-born mother, who teaches music to the children of the town's leading families, and an absent Welsh father. Bill has no sympathy for his uncle's blinkered pro-German patriotism and longs for the day when he can escape small-town life and join the army.

The author, Vincent Sheean (born 5 December 1899), was brought up in Illinois. He went to the University of Chicago and interrupted his studies in 1918 to join the army with a view to serving in Europe. He was disappointed when the armistice came: “I was sorry when the war ended... There were millions of us, young Americans between the ages of 15 or 16 and 18 or 19, who cursed freely all through the middle weeks of November. We felt cheated. We had been put into uniform with the definite promise that we were to be trained as officers and sent to France.” He returned to university in March 1919. On the death of his mother the following year, he moved to New York to start a career in journalism. In 1922 he moved to France to work for the Chicago Tribune, travelling widely as one of its foreign correspondents. In addition to his reporting, he wrote works of fiction, biography and memoir. He wrote a young autobiography called Personal History as he observed the rise of fascism in Europe. It was later adapted into an Alfred Hitchcock film.

There is a rising conflict for Bill Owen, the central character, between his German parentage and his American upbringing. His mother, Louisa, "was filled with foreboding; the year was 1916 and two of her brothers and no fewer than seven nephews were in Germany; she had produced an alien son in a strange land, and although the land was also hers... the growth of her son was setting her apart from it...”
Bill talks about his mother's native country as a detached foreigner:
“The Germans are killing Americans all the time, sinking our ships, insulting us every day, and that Wilson does nothing at all about it except send notes and notes and notes.”

The Singing Tree

This impressive children's novel, published in 1939, is set in rural Hungary during the First World War. The central character, Jancsi, as an adolescent, takes charges of the large family farm when his father leaves for the front. A contemporary review considered it “as moving a plea as I can imagine for maintaining racial and international goodwill”. In particular, the novel describes the close relationship between the Hungarians and the Jews in the village, the mutual respect between the Hungarian family and the Russian prisoners of war who they engage as farm labourers and the friendship towards hungry German children who are sent to the farm for nutrition towards the end of the war. The title of the novel comes from a story which Jancsi’s father tells the family about a battlefield where only one tree survives the devastation. All the birds of different sizes come and sit in the tree and sing. One of the characters recognises that he's also using this story to talk about his farm as a place of wartime refuge.

The author, Kate Seredy (née Serédy Kató, born 10 November 1899), grew up in Budapest. She served as a nurse to the wounded during the First World War. After the war she qualified as an art teacher. She emigrated to the United States in 1922. Her first novel (The Good Master, set in Hungary, with her own illustrations) was published in 1935 and was shortlisted for the Newbury Medal. Her third novel, The White Stag, won her the Newbury Medal in 1938 and her fourth novel (this one) was, like The Good Master, of which it is the sequel, shortlisted for the Newbury Medal. She settled in Montgomery in New York State. During her career, she wrote and illustrated 12 books of her own and illustrated many other books for children.

Jancsi and his father (before leaving for the Front)

Hans, one of the German refugee children who come to live on the farm, writes home to his mother in the autumn of 1917:
“These people do not hate anyone. In our school in Berlin we were told that Russians and English and French are monsters... That is not true, Mother. The six Russians... are like German men, like Papa. Maybe the French and English men are the same. Our teacher told a lie about the Jews too...
I do not hate Russians now, Mother, and I think the Jews are very kind and good. When I grow up, I want to be a teacher and teach what Grigori is always saying. He says that people are all the same in Russia and Germany and Hungary and that we are all brothers. It's true, Mother. Why did our teacher in Berlin lie to us?”

Luckypenny

This satirical novel, published in 1937, is largely set in London with scenes in France, Italy and Spain. With elements of the Eric Ambler thrillers (in which an ordinary man takes on the role of secret agent or detective), this novel features James Luckypenny, a lowly accounts clerk in an English firm that manufactures armaments. When he urgently needs a pay rise, he makes a deal with his boss to go to Italy, obtain the firm’s funds that are trapped in an Italian subsidiary (Mussolini had banned the removal of money from the country) and smuggle it back to England in his artificial leg (the result of a war injury). The success of the mission is brought about by a romantic liaison with Zenaida, a high-ranking Fascist agent, and the two meet again in Barcelona towards the end of the novel during the early stages of civil war.

The author, Bruce Marshall (born 24 June 1899), grew up in Edinburgh. He served in the First World War initially as a private in the Highland Light Infantry and then as a second lieutenant in the Royal Irish Fusiliers. In early November 1918, he was severely wounded on the Western Front. He was rescued by a German medical orderlies and taken prisoner. His injury (as in the case of the central character of this novel) resulted in a leg amputation. He was invalided out of the army in 1920 and resumed his education at the University of St Andrews. His first collection of short stories was written while a student there. After graduation, he worked as an accountant while setting out on a part-time writing career. His first novel was published in 1924. He summed up his reputation in his two spheres of work: “I am an accountant who writes books. In accounting circles I am hailed as a great writer. Among novelists I am assumed to be a competent accountant.” After the Second World War, he settled in France and committed himself to a full-time literary career. he went on to write numerous works of fiction as well as an acclaimed biography of F.F.E. Yeo-Thomas, a British agent in the Second World War, who, like the author, lived in France after the war.

The author, presumably from experience, writes about the central character’s loss of reputation and self-esteem in the years following the war:
“Immediately after the war, Luckypenny... out of uniform, had ceased to be a person of consequence. Ten years after the war, Luckypenny had [looked back towards] the war, remembering its humours and comradeships, and forgetting its horrors. Fifteen years after the war, Luckypenny quite frankly desired war, with all its mud and cold and pain; he wanted to be somebody again, but above all he wanted to do something that he knew was worth doing...”

Snow Country

Originally a short story, this novel, first published in serialised form between 1935 and 1937, and appearing later in an extended and revised edition in 1948, is set in the mountains of western Honshu. The exact location, though not specified in the text, is the onsen (spa) resort of Yuzawa in Niigita Prefecture. The central character, Shimamura, visiting from Tokyo, has an affair with Komako, a young geisha. Much of the novel is concerned with mortality, including the final scene.

The author, Yasunari Kawabata (born 11 June 1899), was born in Osaka. Orphaned at the age of 4, he was brought up by his grandparents. He left school in March 1917 and moved to Tokyo, where he prepared for entry to Tokyo Imperial University in 1920. He graduated with a literature degree in 1924, by which he time his contributions to literary magazines had already gained him a reputation as a writer, his first publication being a short story in 1921. His 1926 short story Izu no odoriko (The Izu Dancer) reinforced his growing reputation. His first novel was published in 1930. In 1968 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature with specific recognition for three novels: this novel, as well as Senbazuru (Thousand Cranes) and Koto (The Old Capital).

The author’s preoccupation with mortality begins in the early pages of the novel with the central character's observation of a terminally-ill young man being nursed on the train journey that brings him to the resort. The novel concludes with a potentially fatal incident, a fire in a warehouse:

“Shimamura put his arm around Komako’s shoulders.
‘What is there to be afraid of?’
’No, no. no!’ Komako shook her head and burst into tears...
She had burst out weeping at the sight of the fire, and Shimamura held her to him without thinking to wonder what had so upset her.
She stopped weeping as quickly as she had begun, and pulled away from him.
‘There's a movie in the warehouse. Tonight. The place will be full of people... People will be hurt. People will burn to death’.”

Skutarevsky

This novel, published in 1932, is largely set in Moscow. E.J. Brown in his Russian Literature since the Revolution regarded it as “probably one of his best works in style and intellectual power”, observing how it  “explores the psychological problems of an eminent scientist working in a socialist state and in what is undoubtedly an autobiographical statement, traces his development from a sceptical critic of the new order into an enthusiastic supporter.” The central character, Sergei Skutarevsky, is a physicist, who has been reluctant to engage with the Revolution. In a meeting with Lenin to discuss his participation in an electrification scheme, he gives his approval in a very cautious way: “Yes, but I have certain doubts”. Whereas his character becomes more politically loyal during the progress of the novel, several members of Skutarevsky’s family are shown to be disloyal and are on a path to self-destruction.

The author, Leonid Leonov (born 31 May 1899), grew up in Moscow. In 1907 his father was exiled to the northern city of Arkhangelsk for publishing two pamphlets with content deemed subversive. He began writing while at school and he had poems published as early as 1915 in his father's periodical. He had intended to study medicine in Moscow but was unable to leave Arkhangelsk due to the civil war. He served as a reporter with the Red Army until 1921. On returning to Moscow, he was introduced to prominent literary figures and his first short stories were published in 1922. His first novel was published in 1924. He went on to write a further five novels as well as several plays. He received the Lenin Prize for his 1953 novel Russki les (The Russian Forest).

In a recollection of the civil war, the author tells of how a friendship grew out of two soldiers’ co-operation in helping a wounded comrade:
“Their partisan code did not allow them to leave a live man to a piecemeal burial by the wild animals. They were still far from being friends then. They crossed hands and made a chair, sat the old man on it and cautiously set off carrying him. He was delirious but so were they; he grew heavier and heavier; his iron-shod squat-toed high boots dangled and banged against their knees. They were nearly in tears. They pulled his boots off. But then the balance was different and he kept falling back. So without saying a word, they pressed shoulder against shoulder to keep him upright. That was the beginning of their strange friendship; that firm, intercrossed grip of hands, compact as any oath, lasting all through a night which was longer than a century.”