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Reviews and Notes

Throwback Thursday - 1918 in Literature

5/3/2018

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I have been digging into some family history recently and find it fascinating to look back at what was and compare it to what is. One hundred years ago the world was still engulfed in the War to End All Wars and, even with that "resolved" would plunge into the great influenza pandemic that winter. One could argue in some sense we are no further along.
Anyway, in 1918 there was no Nobel Prize for literature and a novel called His Family by Ernest Poole won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature. I don't know anyone who can remember Mr. Poole or his novel. But, in 1918, a book titled My Antonia was published and is still in print today. Willa Cather's classic is still read in schools and is at the top of the Goodreads list of "Most Popular Books Published in 1918" with over 155,000 people having it in their lists on that site.
The next most popular book is the ubiquitous Elements of Style by Strunk and White. Although less well used in the age of the online than it was in my school days, this venerable book has over 114,000 listings. Not bad for being 100 years old!
After that things fall off precipitously. No other book garners even 17,000 listings. I do recognize many of the authors of the next tier of books from a century past - Kahlil Gibran, L. Frank Baum, and Edgar Rice Burroughs - though the one I think most poignant is the 10th ranked book, The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen.
Owen was killed in action one week before the end of the First World War. His poetry reflects the grim reality of war and he is considered the foremost poet of the period. In honesty only a few of his poems were published before his death and the full collection of all his works had to wait until 1963. But Goodreads places over 7,000 listings for the original few.
One final interesting inclusion in Goodreads list of the top 200 is Robert Baden-Powell's Girl Guiding. Baden-Powell and his sister Agnes had founded the scouting movement in 1908 (boys) and 1910 (girls) in England and the Scouting Movement quickly spread to the United States and many other countries. Girl Guiding was the second handbook for girls.
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  • Home
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