Photograph of the cover of "Patriotic Toasts" by Fred Emerson Brooks, held by UNT Special Collections. The cover is striped with red at the top, white in the middle and blue at the bottom. The title is over it in big black letters with the author in the bottom right corner in red lettering. This edition of Patriotic Toasts was published in 1917 by Forbes and Company in Chicago. Each page has a lithographic decorative blue border surrounding the printed text, and the dense cardboard cover contains a stoic depiction of Uncle Sam carrying an American flag, reinforcing the book’s self-proclaimed patriotism. The author, Fred Emerson Brooks, a popular 19th century poet, wrote several books of “toasts” – short poems likely meant to be read aloud in social gatherings. A notice in the back of this volume advertises Brooks’s other publications, including the comically titled Cream Toasts and Buttered Toasts, with a series of quotes from major newspapers attesting to Brooks’s sparkling wit. The collection of poems in this book captures the vigor of the American spirit at the time of its entry into World War I. Poems such as “Old Glory” and “Liberty’s Banner” are dense with the nationalist …

Photograph of the cover of "Peace and Patriotism" by Elva S. Smith, held by UNT Special Collections. The pale blue cover has a black stamped graphic over most of the front of a woman wearing a long white dress. The woman holds the dark train with stars up and holds a dove in her arms. The title is at the bottom in big letters.

Photographs of "Poems" by G.K. Chesterton, held by UNT Special Collections. The cover is red with the front framed by a decorative gold design and the title and author at the top, followed by another design, all stamped in gold. Image 2, frontispiece containing a black and white photo of a man with a mustached holding a book and pen, titled G.K. Chesterton under it. Image 3, poem titled "The Wife of Flanders" on the right page numbered 27.

Photograph of the cover of "The Red Flower: Poems Written in War Time" by Henry Van Dyke, held by UNT Special Collections. The cover is white with a dark blue spine, the top of the front contains the title at the top and author at the bottom in dark blue print. In the middle of it is an orange/red flower design.

Photograph of the cover of "En Repos and Elsewhere Over There" by Lansing Warren and Robert A. Donaldson, held by UNT Special Collections. The cover is light brown with a darker spine, the title and authors printed at the top in black ink.

Photograph of the cover of "Rhymes of a Red Cross Man" by Robert W. Service, held by UNT Special Collections. The cover is olive green the title and author within a decorative frame, all in gold lettering and lines.

Photograph of the cover of "Rupert Brooke: A Memoir" by Edward Marsh, held by UNT Special Collections. The simple black cover has the title in a white box at the top, the title inside it framed by an orange line. Rupert Brooke (1887-1915) was the son of a Rugby schoolmaster and attended school at Rugby and later at King’s College of Cambridge University. After completing his education, Brooke continued writing poetry and became one of the founders of the first anthology of Georgian Poetry. Now little studied, it was a dominant poetic movement of the time until it was supplanted by Imagism and the High Modernism of T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and W. B. Yeats. While not as experimental as the Modernists, the Georgian poets did look to free poetry from the ornate language of Victorian verse and employ in its place plain and concrete language. Along with the Georgian poets, Brooke also interacted with members of the influential Bloomsbury Group, which included such prominent writers as Virginia Woolf and E. M. Forster. When war broke out, Brooke enlisted but never saw combat, instead dying of illness in March 1915 on his way to Gallipoli. Despite this, Brooke became …

Photograph of the cover of "Rupert Brooke's Death and Burial" by Jeanne Perdriel-Vaissière, held by UNT Special Collections. The light blue cover is worn and wrinkled, the title in orange curled letters in a white rectangle at the top left. Rupert Brooke (1887-1915) was the son of a Rugby schoolmaster and attended school at Rugby and later at King’s College of Cambridge University. After completing his education, Brooke continued writing poetry and became one of the founders of the first anthology of Georgian Poetry. Now little studied, it was a dominant poetic movement of the time until it was supplanted by Imagism and the High Modernism of T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and W. B. Yeats. While not as experimental as the Modernists, the Georgian poets did look to free poetry from the ornate language of Victorian verse and employ in its place plain and concrete language. Along with the Georgian poets, Brooke also interacted with members of the influential Bloomsbury Group, which included such prominent writers as Virginia Woolf and E. M. Forster. When war broke out, Brooke enlisted but never saw combat, instead dying of illness in March 1915 on his way to Gallipoli. Despite this, Brooke became …

Photographs of "Selected Poems on Woodrow Wilson," held by UNT Special Collections. The first image, the pale blue cover of the book with the title and author printed at the top of the front in dark blue. The second image shows the title page of the book, including the editor, illustrator and publishing information. Image 3, "The Crusader (In Memory of Woodrow Wilson)" poem by Thomas Curtis Clark on page 57. On the page to the left of it is an illustration of a pointed doorway, flags seen inside of it.

Photograph of the title page of "The Shepherd" by Edmund Blunden, held by UNT Special Collections. To the left of the title page is a short list of poems written by Blunden.

Photograph of the cover of "Somewhere in France: And Other Poems" by Ella F. Cowan, held by UNT Special Collections. The grey textured cover has the title and author stamped on the front at the top.

Photograph of the cover of "Song of the Soldiers" by Thomas Hardy, held by UNT Special Collections. The cover is brown, the front framed a black design. The song and author are at the top and underlined in black ink.

Photographs of "Songs of the Shrapnel Shell" by Cyril Morton Horne, held by UNT Special Collections. The green cover contains the title at the top in an indented part of the cover with the author all in gold lettering. Image 2, the frontispiece/title page. On the left of the title page is a black and white photograph of a soldier in uniform. Image 3, pages 42 and 43 from the book, titled "Chrysallis" on the left page.

Photographs of "Songs of Youth and War" by P.H.B. Lyon, held by UNT Special Collections. The umber cover has the title and author at the top stamped in black lettering. Image 2, pages 60 and 61. Page 60 is titled "Intermezzo" and another section titled "One A Sergeant's Grave." Page 61 is a titled poem. "The Dead Who Die Not."

Photographs of "Songs & Sonnets for England in War Time" a collection of lyrics by various authors inspired by the great war, held by UNT Special Collections. Published in the fall of 1914, just a month after Britain joined World War I, Songs and Sonnets for England in War Time reprints poems from a variety of newspapers and magazines. These are meant to inspire the nation and its individual subjects to victory and greatness in time of war. The volume’s cover is made of a grey wrapper that is not attached to the spine but folded over thick cardstock. Printed in red, the cover portrays Justica Britannia enthroned with a drawn sword raised in one hand and the scales of justice in the other, representing Britain's justness and might. The title page features an epigraph by Sir Walter Scott, and both the unattributed introduction and the publisher’s note by John Lane stress that patriotism can be inspired by verse for those called to serve and for those on the home front. Reinforcing this patriotic bent, the back cover and the inside front cover proclaim that the book’s profits will be donated to the Prince of Wales’ National Relief Fund, a …

Photograph of the title page from "Sonnets from a Prison Camp" by Archibald Allan Bowman, held by UNT Special Collections. Scottish philosopher and poet Allan Archibald Bowman (1883-1936) was working as a professor at Princeton University when World War I began. He took a leave of absence in 1915, enlisted in the British Army, and was assigned to the Highland Light Infantry. Three years later, Bowman was taken prisoner by German forces during the Battle of Lys. The poems collected in Sonnets from a Prison Camp were written after Bowman’s capture, between April 27 and July 25, 1918. Most were composed at the Rastatt prison camp, though some were written after Bowman was transferred to Hesepe. The volume itself contains twelve chronologically arranged sections and a clean, minimal layout with one sonnet per page. This neatly bound, 152-page book has a board cover with thread wear on the bottom and top of the spine. A lithographed errata slip on different paper is pasted into the binding and precedes the title page. Part of the Soldier Poets section of the exhibit, Sonnets from a Prison Camp contains poems that reflect on the horrors of war, the boredom of life in a …

Photograph of the cover of "Valour and Vision: Poems of the War" by Jacqueline T. Trotter, held by UNT Special Collections. The book cover is dark red with a white label containing the title at the top. The first letter of some of the words is red.

Photograph of the cover of "Vision of War" by Lincoln Colcord, held by UNT Special Collections. The cover is red with the title at the top. Above it is a banner with sun rays graphic. Towards the bottom of the cover is a black imprinted teepee.

Photograph of the cover of "The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon" by Siegfried Sassoon, held by UNT Special Collections. The cover is red with the title on a white lbel at the top in black print. The poet Siegfried Sassoon, recipient of the Military Cross for acts of heroism, became famous not only for his angry and candid war poems, but also for his open letter of protest to the War Department after being wounded in action. “I believe that this War is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it,” he wrote, and after the letter was read aloud in the House of Commons, Sassoon expected to be court-martialed. Once the poet Robert Graves intervened, claiming that Sassoon was suffering from shell-shock. Sassoon was then sent to a facility for mentally infirm soldiers, where he later mentored Wilfred Owen. The poem “The One-Legged Man” represents one of Sassoon’s more bitterly ironic poems in which a man blesses the fortunes of one horror—his own amputation—since it spares him the greater horror of further military service. Doubtless the story resonates with Sassoon’s own, where his patriotism as a citizen of England became subordinate to more peaceful allegiances …

Photograph of the cover of "Yanks," held by UNT Special Collections. The pale brown book is worn around the edges and contains the title inside a rectangle, all imprinted in gold.

Photographs of "The Years Between" by Rudyard Kipling, held by UNT Special Collections. The cover of the book is pale pink with the front framed by double dark blue lines. The title and author are printed at the top in blue, followed by a drawing of a soldier in uniform sitting down with papers in his hand. Image 2, text titled "Epitaphs" on page 135 of the book.

Photographs of "Forgotten Places" by Ian Mackenzie, held by UNT Special Collections. The cover of the book is grey, with the spine exposing some green paper. The front of the cover is framed by a black line, with the author and title at the top in black and the publishing information at the bottom. Image 2, "Peace" and "Desire," poems one pages 60 and 61. Image 3, frontispiece and title page. The frontispiece has a photo of a young man, with the name "Ian Mackenzie" signed under it.

Photographs of "The Heart of Peace: And Other Poems" by Laurence Housman, held by UNT Special Collections. The light blue cover has the title printed at the top in dark blue, under it are six small hearts. Image 2, two pages with a poem titled "The Quick and The Dead" on page 16 and 17.

Photographs of "Lyrics of War and Peace" by Paul Williamson, held by UNT Special Collections. The cover is a worn bright blue, with the title and author at the top in gold lettering. Image 2, title page. On the page is the signature of Paul Williamson, followed by stamp design with the words "Lege Quod Legas."