1942: Literature, English

The crucial fact to be borne in mind in reviewing books published in Britain in 1941-42 is that in this period 20,000,000 books were destroyed by enemy action, over 5,000,000 in a single night in the burning of Paternoster Row. This was followed by an unprecedented paper shortage, and by an even greater scarcity of all binding materials and of labor for this purpose. All this was in the face of tremendously increased demand and need for books, due to destruction not only of publishers' stocks and great public collections, but of thousands of cherished home libraries, to calls for shelter-reading, and to the creation of countless new readers by the strong interest taken by every class of society in war aims and plans for the future.

For a book to survive such pressure and win through into print in England, the definition of a 'good book' had to take on the new meaning of a book provably 'good for' something so needed that for its sake readers would gladly forego amenities of production and put up, under Authorized Economy Standards, with narrow margins, poor grayish paper, and a typographic scheme whose one concern was legibility. These conditions of publication are described in what may rank as a historical document, John Brophy's Britain Needs Books (National Book Council). Not until these conditions are realized in America will the appearance here of books printed in Britain in 1941-42 arouse the sense of glory to which they are entitled, for each line, page and picture means difficulties apparently insurmountable, and devotion by which they were surmounted.

In normal times it was possible for an American in his own country to inspect all the more important British books of the year with no more trouble than finding a large modern bookstore. He could be fairly certain of obtaining the best of these books in American editions, whether or not the author had an established reputation; and in the section of the shop devoted to imported books he could himself decide on the merits of new works that had made some impression in England without finding a large American market.

To-day the situation has been radically changed. British authors whose works sold well in America before 1939 are still sure of their American market; but a new writer, especially one who has something new to say in a new literary genre, may remain completely unknown on this side — not in the relative sense that his or her book had failed to find an American publisher and so missed the chance of being reviewed, but in the absolute and literal sense of the word 'unknown,' which can be used only when the most diligent search fails to bring a single imported copy to light. Thus Inez Holden, creating almost a new technique of narrative in her Night Shift (John Lane, 1942), to record a psychological situation with which men of letters have never before had to deal, could remain so unknown on this side that the very title of her book could be unconsciously appropriated by an American best-seller. Gwynne-Browne's F. S. P. (Chatto, 1942) has significance in the history of English prose style; if conventional English cannot put the reader through the experience of waiting on Dunkerque's beaches, it is all to the good to find a non-professional doing the job effectively under the stylistic influence of Gertrude Stein. But F. S. P. remains unknown in America. British writers of light verse have been placing major lyric poets in the embarrassing position of seeming to write 'heavy' verse — too heavy to rise to the obvious emotional challenge of the blitz; the woman whose pen name is 'Sagittarius' presented the most vivid account in literature of the hair-breadth saving of St. Paul's, with all the emotional condensation of rhymed verse, yet her London Watches is unobtainable in America and already out of print — due to instant demand — in Britain.

Fiction.

Fiction by established authors naturally and largely appeared in American editions. Thus we had Frank Swinnerton's Thankless Child, a study in family relations; G. B. Stern's Rakonitz continuation, The Young Matriarch; Sheila Kaye-Smith's The Secret Son; H. G. Wells's satiric You Can't Be Too Careful; Phyllis Bottome's picture of courage in London Pride and Margery Allingham's in The Oaken Heart; Margaret Kennedy's intimate record of British spirit in Where Stands a Winged Sentry, we had Somerset Maugham's Hour before Dawn, V. Sackville West's Grand Canyon; Humphrey Pakington's Our Aunt Auda; Storm Jameson's Then We Shall Hear Singing; J. B. Priestley's Blackout in Gretly; Ann Bridge's Frontier Passage, which came to audiences ready prepared. Eric Knight's Sam Small Flies Again carried along a popular figure to readers of The Flying Yorkshireman — to whom his death early in 1943, in a plane on duty, came as a personal blow. Doris Leslie's House in the Dust had an American edition, bringing us the story of a mansion bombed in the blitz; so did Edith Pargeter's People of My Own, a family between the two great wars; Anne Meredith's House of the Heart, with a family living in this house for nine generations; and England past and present in Norman Collins's The Quiet Lady. Ernest Raymond's The Last to Rest is a quiet, convincing study of the transformation of simple citizens into heroes, and Elizabeth Goudge's Castle on the Hill dealing with a group of uprooted Britons demonstrated British values that stand firm. The invincible gayety of Angela Thirkell's Northbridge Rectory and Merling Hall heightened the stoic attitude of her country gentry to air attacks; Nevil Shute's Pied Piper dealt delicately with refugee children; Seven for Cornelia, by Catherine MacDonald MacLean, with children evacuated to the Scottish Highlands; and James Ronalds's Old Soldiers Never Die with the situation of the over-age military man. A first novel, James Aldridge's Signed with Their Honour, flashed out of an airman's experience, and from an airman came the fine Falling through Space, by Richard Hillary, whose death on duty ended a promising career.

History and Biography.

Historical novels reached us from England in the usual proportion, the leader being Margaret Irwin's Bothwell romance, The Gay Galliard. Biography included Philip Guedalla's Mr. Churchill, Grant Richards's Housman, Hilaire Belloc's Elizabeth, A. E. W. Mason's Francis Drake, Patricia Strauss's Cripps, Hesketh Pearson's G. B. S., Mrs. Belloc Lowndes's memoir of her mother which was also a historic document of the Franco-Prussian War, I Too Have Lived in Arcadia, and a composite biography by William Gaunt, The Preraphaelite Tragedy. The posthumous essays of Virginia Woolf, Death of the Moth thus reached us, and G. N. M. Trevelyan's English Social History made history of its own in America.

Books Across the Sea.

There remained, however, highly important books that would under peacetime conditions have been imported to meet demands that though relatively smaller, were strong, continued and coming from readers of keen intelligence. These, due to currency restrictions and other conditions prohibitory to importing booksellers, seemed lost altogether to all American readers save such as kept standing accounts with booksellers overseas. This situation was met in 1941-42 by a society unique among organizations for international goodwill: 'Books Across the Sea,' with headquarters in America at the English Speaking Union, 30 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, and in England at Aldwych House, London. By sending to the America Reading Room of this society in London, as individual gifts, 'ambassador books' about America published since war began and deemed by a jury of selection to be worth precious cargo space in interpreting American conditions, ideals and background to an eager British audience, this circle established a collection, widely used throughout England, numbering 1,000 volumes by the close of 1942 and reinforced by a large collection of government publications given by the Library of Congress. A reciprocal gift of books similarly interpreting present-day England, chosen by distinguished authorities, is now housed at the New York reading room of 'Books Across the Sea.' Through this exchange, many Americans have thus been able to examine, in single copies otherwise inaccessible in this country, books of the highest value to all who belong, as readers, to the common realm of the English language.

Poetry.

It answers the question 'Is any poetry coming now from Britain?' with the rush of verse, keeping a surprisingly high level, from the armed forces, especially the R.A.F., in such volumes as Poems from the Forces (Routledge), Dispersal Point, by John Pudney (Bodley Head), the anthology Poems of This War, and Alun Lewis's Raider's Dawn, the last two later brought out in the United States. Wilfred Gibson's Challenge represented older poets, with John Masefield's Land Workers. The younger generation gave us the fervor and fire of Rostrevor Hamilton's Apollyon (Heinemann), and the rural gayety of Ruth Pitter's The Rude Potato, while Gordon Boshell's My Pen My Sword represented the influence on morale of honest newspaper verse.

Personal Tales.

Among personal experiences preserved in this collection are Basil Woon's Hell Came to London (Davies), Reginald Foster's Dover Front (Secker), H. A. Wilson's Death Over Haggerston (Mowbray), Hilda Marchant's Women and Children Last (Gollancz), Michael Wassey's Ordeal by Fire (Secker), George Sava's They Stayed in London (Faber), The Bells Go Down, diary of an Auxiliary Fire Service man (Methuen), and Peter de Polnay's Death and Tomorrow (Secker), most vivid report yet given of France under German occupation. Among the novels are John Brown's Body, Gordon Boshell's study of an average Englishman in war (Secker), Mrs. Morel, by Marjorie Hessell Tiltman (Hodder), showing the new England being shaped on the anvil of war; Ramping Cat, by Christopher Mawson an experiment in historical fiction placing, as it were, Henry VIII and Katherine Howard in modern dress; and two war novels by Robert Graves, The Avengers and The Thin Blue Line (Hutchinson). History Under Fire (Batsford) preserved a noble record, in photographs and text by James Pope-Hennessey, of architectural beauty destroyed by the blitz, a record continued by The Bombed Buildings of Britain (Architectural Press), also available here.

Post-War Problems.

A new literature is rising from an equalitarian England; it appears in such soldier stories as those of Gerald Kersh, They Die with Their Boots Clean and Nine Lives of Bill Nelson (Heinemann); in sea stories such as My Name Is Frank and Log Book by the merchant seaman Frank Laskier, and by the most moving of all, Went the Day Well (Harrap), in which 28 famous writers speak for 28 men and women of all ranks and classes, known to them, who held in common an eagerness to live and a gladness to die for the new world in process of becoming.

A feature of British war books always to be considered is the stress placed upon postwar planning of all kinds, from Conditions of Peace, by Edward Hallett Carr, first Ambassador Book to cross for 'Books Across the Sea' and later published here, to the report of the Archbishop of Canterbury (Penguin Books), the Beveridge Report, the symposium When we Build Again (Allen), and the beautifully illustrated triumph of cheap production, Living in Cities, by Ralph Tubbs (Penguin Books), whose first edition was made possible by using the central core of a charred block of plate paper that had gone through the Great Fire of London. In general, the pamphlet has in England come into its own, and is regarded with the respect due to its contents, even if they are not between board covers. It should be added to this brief summary that in the literature of a land at war the humor, pictorial and otherwise, of Fougasse, Osbert Lancaster, Pomt, Sillice, and the never-failing Low, remains in testimony to the spirit that made the common people mighty to endure. This courage was immortalized in the best-selling book in England reaching indeed astronomical figures — the magnificently illustrated publication Front Line, telling what went on in the Battle of Britain when the front line reached the back yard.