Modern British Fiction

A tenant farmer’s son had no business daring to dream of a future with an earl’s daughter, but that couldn’t keep Amos Darby from his secret friendship with Charlotte Terrington…until the reality of the Great War sobered youthful dreams. Now decades later, he bears the brutal scars of battles fought in the trenches and their futures that were stolen away. His return home doesn’t come with tender reunions, but with the hollow fulfillment of opening a bookshop on his own and retreating as a recluse within its walls.

This anthology, first published in 1919, is very much a record of its time. Many of the poems deal with the cataclysmic trauma of World War One and the emergence of a new world order after the fading of the Edwardian era. Among the authors of the 151 poems can be found the names of Rupert Brooke and Ivor Gurney, best known as war poets, as well as James Joyce and the mystic philosopher Evelyn Underhill.

Inspired by the real-life murder of a British army soldier by religious fanatics, and the rampant burning of mosques that followed, Guy Gunaratne’s In Our Mad and Furious City is a snapshot of the diverse, frenzied edges of modern-day London. A crackling debut from a vital new voice, it pulses with the frantic energy of the city’s homegrown grime music and is animated by the youthful rage of a dispossessed, overlooked, and often misrepresented generation.

This anthology of 140 poems, published in 1921, features the work of 97 British and American poets who were active in the early 20th century. Among the more famous names are John Masefield, Rupert Brooke, Walter de la Mare, William Butler Yeats, Robert Graves, Amy Lowell, Carl Sandburg, Edna St Vincent Millay, Joyce Kilmer and Witter Bynner.