Part 4: From World War I to World War II 1920-1945

Introduction

Part 4 of this series covers the period running from 1920 up until the end of World War II in 1945. Works from this era span a wide variety of themes including a reaction against the horrors of the Great War, years of economic boom and bust, the rise of communism and fascism as political forces and the development of modernism as a literary movement. 

The Great War

Whilst the work of the war poets (including Rupert Brooke and Wilfrid Owen, neither of whom lived to see the Armistice) provided a more immediate literary reaction against the slaughter of the Great War, over a decade was to elapse before lengthier treatments of the subject began to appear. For example, Robert Graves’ autobiographical Good-bye to All That was published in 1929. Whilst the book covers Graves’ childhood and school years, a large portion of the narrative concerns his war experiences with detailed and vivid descriptions of trench warfare, including the Battle of Loos, coming under enemy fire and gas attacks. The following year Graves’ friend Siegfried Sassoon published the second instalment of his fictionalised autobiographical “Sherston Trilogy”, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer. This follows Sassoon’s alter ego George Sherston from army training school through his experiences in the trenches between 1916 and 1917 to his eventual hospitalisation for shell shock. The novel gives an alternative perspective to many of the events described in Good-bye to All That. This, plus Graves’ unauthorised inclusion in his book of a poem that Sassoon had sent to him in a letter, was a cause of the two authors and former comrades in arms falling out. The book was recalled and Sassoon’s poem is excised from later editions of Good-bye to All That and replaced by asterisks.

Ernest Hemingway adopted a similar fictionalised approach to his semi-autobiographical A Farewell to Arms, published in 1929. Like Hemingway, the novel’s protagonist Frederic Henry is an American who serves as an ambulance driver in the Italian army. The story sets the doomed romance between Henry and an English nurse Catherine Barkley against the broader background of the larger scale tragedy of the conflict. Hemingway was to return to the theme of war with his 1940 novel For Whom the Bell Tolls which tells the story of another young America Robert Jordan who is serving with the International Brigade during the Spanish Civil War.

Virginia Woolf and The Bloomsbury Group

One of the leading figures of modernist literature during the interwar years was Virginia Woolf. Woolf was also a leading light of the informal group of writers, intellectuals and artists known as the Bloomsbury Group that lived or worked in that area of London during the first half of the twentieth century and which also included John Maynard Keynes, E M Forster and Lytton Strachey.

Woolf’s reputation is largely based upon two stylistically innovative novels – Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse – that she published through her own imprint, The Hogarth Press, which she established with her husband Leonard in 1917. Mrs Dalloway details a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway as she makes preparations to host a party that evening. Although the events described occupy a single day, there are frequent flashbacks and use of the “stream of consciousness” technique to document the momentary inner thoughts of the characters. Owing to these structural and stylistic similarities, Mrs Dalloway is thought by some to be a response to James Joyce’s Ulysses which was published in 1922. Ulysses also concentrates on the events of one day – 16 June 1904 - chronicling Leopold Bloom’s activities in Dublin. Woolf was known to be an admirer of Ulysses describing its cemetery scene as a “masterpiece”. Mrs Dalloway was published three years after Ulysses in May 1925 in an edition of 2,000 copies.

To the Lighthouse, published in 1927, describes the Ramsey family, plus assorted friends and acquaintances, taking a vacation in their holiday home on the island of Skye. With the outbreak of the Great War and various misfortunes that befall the family, the home lies empty for a decade years before some of the surviving characters reassemble at the house in the novel’s concluding section. Again, Woolf’s focus is on revealing the characters’ thoughts and feelings. Woolf conceived of the novel during one of her regular walks around Bloomsbury’s Tavistock Square where she lived at number 52 between 1924 and 1939 and a bust has been erected near her former home by the Virginia Woolf Society to commemorate this event. 

The dustjackets for both Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse were designed by Woolf’s sister Vanessa Bell and their simple designs painted in black, offset with one subdued colour, did much to establish The Hogarth Press’ visual identity. Jacketed copies command a premium price at auction – for example in October 2009 a jacketed copy of Mrs Dalloway fetched $18,000 at Swann Galleries in New York.

The “Bright Young Things”

Following the end of the Great War, the 1920s were a period during which economic and industrial development soared and jazz music and dancing became popular. The “Roaring Twenties” were a time during which a small group of young aristocrats and socialites were able to throw lavish parties, drink heavily and generally enjoy hedonistic lifestyles from which a number of writers drew inspiration with differing approaches to the subject matter.

P G Wodehouse’s novels from this period focus upon the foibles of the upper classes with his Jeeves and Wooster series of comic masterpieces being particularly sought after by collectors. After rising late the indolent and slow witted - yet generous and good natured - aristocrat Bertie Wooster spends a largely carefree existence at his club - the Drones – or staying with friends and relatives at their country houses. However, he is regularly reliant upon the efforts of his resourceful and intelligent “gentleman’s personal gentleman” Jeeves to extricate him from a series of awkward and difficult situations. One particularly amusing Jeeves and Wooster story “The Purity of the Turf” appears in The Inimitable Jeeves, published in 1925 where the pair seek to profit by gambling upon on the events at a village school fete. Much of the amusement in these stories derives from Jeeves’ marvellously understated responses to his younger master.

The humour in Evelyn Waugh’s novel Vile Bodies, which takes as its subject matter the group of wealthy socialites known as the “Bright Young Things” is more satirical in nature. It follows the exploits of aspiring novelist Adam Symes and his on-off engagement to fiancée Nina Blount. A number of humorous incidents arise, particularly after Symes finds employment writing the Society column for the “Daily Excess”. He uses the column for his own amusement as a vehicle to popularise the wearing of green bowler hats and the creation of fictitious stars of the social scene such as “Count Cincinatti”. The later sections of the novel, thought to have been written after the break up of Waugh’s marriage, take on a much darker tone. Vile Bodies was published in 1930, the year that Waugh converted to Catholicism and this is an influence that becomes more apparent in his subsequent works such as Brideshead Revisited (1945).

In America, the decadence and materialism of this period is captured in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece The Great Gatsby published in 1925. Here the shallow and amoral Buchanans (who represent the “old aristocracy”) are contrasted with the ambiguous character of the enigmatic Jay Gatsby who, having made his fortune through bootlegging, holds extravagant parties at his Long Island mansion. The dustjacket of the American first edition is a particularly celebrated piece of jacket art with Francis Cugat’s Art Deco-style image depicting a pair of disembodied woman’s eyes and mouth hovering in the night sky over the lights of an amusement park. A closer inspection of the pupils reveals a pair of tiny reclining nude figures. Ironically for a work that questions materialistic values, the presence of this jacket can add tremendously to the value of this sought after title with copies fetching up to £90,000.

The Depression

The boom years ended when the economies of the Western World suffered a spectacular downturn following the Wall Street stock market crash of October 1929, which signalled the start of a 10-year slump. In the American Mid West this depression was exacerbated by the “dust bowl” conditions that were created by a combination of drought and unecological agricultural practices which rendered vast areas of farmland useless.

One of the key works to emerge from this period was John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath which describes the plight of the Joad family who, after their farm in Oklahoma is repossessed, set out for California lured by the promise of work on the fruit farms. Upon arriving in California they find that there is an oversupply of migrant labour and the workers are attempting to form unions to protect themselves from exploitation. The novel was published in 1939 and gained Steinbeck the Pulitzer prize the following year. From a European perspective, the poverty suffered by many during this period was documented in George Orwell’s first full length work Down and Out in Paris and London, published in 1933, which describes his experiences working in poorly paid jobs in restaurant kitchens in Paris and, following his return to England, living rough on the streets. Today this title, which was issued by Gollancz in an edition of 1,500 copies is one the most valuable of Orwell’s works with jacketed copies fetching upwards of £2,500.



The Rise of Totalitarianism

The harsh economic conditions were one of the factors that led to the rise of the Nazi party in Germany with Hitler becoming Chancellor in 1933. This period is captured in Christopher Isherwood’s short novel Goodbye to Berlin. Although it was first published by The Hogarth Press in 1939, it is set in the period 1930 to 1933 and its cast of characters, which include the Jewish heiress Natalia and gay couple Peter and Otto, features a number of individuals who would face persecution at the hands of the Nazis.

Following the Russian Revolution in 1917 and particularly after Lenin’s death in 1924, the communist regime under Stalin took the Soviet Union down a similar path towards totalitarianism. This period of Soviet history forms the basis of Orwell’s memorable allegory Animal Farm. After overthrowing their human masters on the farm, the animals’ revolutionary ideals are betrayed by wickedness and greed as the tyrannical Napoleon, a fierce Berkshire pig, establishes himself as dictator. The novel was published in August 1945 just over 3 months after the end of the Second World War in Europe and, as such, was one of the first works to be critical of our wartime Soviet allies. The subsequent Cold War was to have a significant influence on literature in the post-war period, particularly in the spy fiction genre. 

FROM WORLD WAR I TO WORLD WAR II: 1920-1945 – SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

A guide to current values of first editions in Very Good condition (with dustjackets).

Joyce, James: ULYSSES

            (Shakespeare and Company, Paris, 1922) (First printing, copies 1-100 printed on

            Dutch handmade paper, signed by the author)................................…£100,000+

Wodehouse, P.G.: THE INIMITABLE JEEVES

(Herbert Jenkins, 1923)…….…………………………......£80-£100 (£1,000-£1,500)

Ditto as JEEVES (George H. Doran, US, 1923)…..…...£80-£100 (£1,000-£1,500)

Fitzgerald, F. Scott: THE GREAT GATSBY

(Scribner’s, US, 1925)(First issue)….…..….......£2,000-£3,000 (£50,000-£90,000)

Ditto (Chatto & Windus, 1926)………..…………........£300-£400 (£2,000-£3,000+)

Woolf, Virginia: MRS DALLOWAY

(Hogarth Press, 1925)…….……………….……….……........£600-£800 (£15,000+)

Woolf, Virginia: TO THE LIGHTHOUSE

(Hogarth Press, 1927)…….……………….……….……........£300-£500 (£10,000+)

Graves, Robert: GOOD-BYE TO ALL THAT

            (Jonathan Cape, 1929)………………………….….………£80-£100 (£1,000-£1,250)

Hemingway, Ernest: A FAREWELL TO ARMS

            (Scribners, US, 1929)…………………………...…..……£300-£400 (£2,500-£3,000)

Sassoon, Siegfried: MEMOIRS OF AN INFANTRY OFFICER

            (Faber & Faber, 1930)…………..………………...…..…………£25-£30 (£150-£200)

Waugh, Evelyn: VILE BODIES

            (Chapman & Hall, 1930)…………………………....…..£300-£500 (£6,000-£8,000+)

Orwell, George: DOWN AND OUT IN PARIS AND LONDON

(Gollancz, 1933)…….………………………….......................£200-£300 (£2,500+)

Ditto (Harper, US, 1933)…………………………….....…........£100-£200 (£1,000+)

Isherwood, Christopher: GOODBYE TO BERLIN

            (Hogarth Press, 1939)………………………….............£90-£120 (£1,500-£2,000)

Steinbeck, John: THE GRAPES OF WRATH

(Viking, US, 1939).……..…..…………………….............£75-£100 (£3,000-£4,000)

Ditto (Heineman, 1939).……..………..………….….......……….....£20-£30 (£500+)

Hemingway, Ernest: FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS

            (Scribners, US, 1940)……………………………...……...…..£50-£75 (£750-£1,000)

Orwell, George: ANIMAL FARM

(Secker & Warburg, 1945)…….…………………………...............£60-£80 (£1,500)

Ditto (Harcourt Brace, US, 1946)…………….…………...…......£20-£30 (£80-£100)

Part 5: Modern first editions from 1945 to 1980