Photograph of the cover of "Soldier Songs from Anzac" by Tom Skeyhill, held by UNT Special Collections. The cover is worn lavender in color, with a double border in black ink. The title is at the top, and the publishing information at the bottom also in black ink.

Photograph of the cover of "American Soldier Ballads" by F.B. Camp, held by UNT Special Collections. The cover is dark yellow in color with the title at the top in red lettering.Under the title is an illustration of soldiers sitting or standing around a fire. 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 rhetoric that would eventually lose much of its appeal …

Photographs of "The Bells of Peace" by John Galsworthy, held by UNT Special Collections. The brown paper cover is framed by a red line, the title in simple black print. Image 2, page titled "The Bells of Peace" with two paragraphs, the first letter of each a red L. Image 3, pages 3 and 3. They are both titled "The Bells of Peace" at the top. Each page has 2 paragraphs, the first letter of each big and red. The bottom of page 3 has the date June 1920.

Photographs of "Flower of Youth: Poems in War Time" by Katharine Tynan, held by UNT Special Collections. Image 1, the spine of the dark blue book with the title on a white label on the spine. Image 2, with the page to the left of it containing a box with the title of books also by Tynan.

Photographs of "More Songs of Angus, and Others" by Violet Jacob, held by UNT Special Collections. The first image shows the tile page, the page on the left blank except for a small stamp. Image 2, book open to a poem over two pages, titled "Glory" on the left and numbered 28 and 29.

Photographs of "Our Hospital Anzac British Canadian" also known as "Our Hospital ABC" by Hampden Gordon and M.G. Tindall, held by UNT Special Collections. The first image the brown cover of the book with a blue spine. The title is at the top in red letters framed by white, an illustration of a nurse in a white dress outfit with two white tents by her. At the bottom are the acknowledgments for the creators. The second image is of two grey pages, the page on the right the title page with an illustration of a woman in white and black holding a frying pan. Image 3, pages 5 and 6 with the page on the left titled with a big red C and a description of what it stands for, the page on the right containing an illustration of an injured soldier with two children standing around him. Image 4, the spine of the book with the title spread throughout it. Image 5, back cover of the book with an illustration of a nurse in the white and black nurse dress, holding a bottle in her hand. Our Hospital ABC with pictures by Joyce Dennys and verses by Hampden Gordon …

Photographs of "Poems of Peace and War" by Caroline R. Bispham, held by UNT Special Collections. The book is a simple white paper booklet with the title at the top and author at the bottom in black print lettering. Over most of the middle page is a thick red cross. Image 2, "The Invader" and "Peace on Earth" poems on pages 12 and 13.

Photographs of "Socks" by Emily Caroline Oliphant, held by UNT Special Collections. Image 2, shows the title page, the words "Moriendo Vivo" in the middle of it. Image 3, open book with table of contents on the left page and the page on the right the beginning of a chapter titled "Socks" with the date September 1914 under it. Image 4, page of text titled "Socks" on the left and page on right titled "The Mine-Sweepers." Image 1, green book cover with the title and author in the middle in red lettering. In the top right corner are blue, white and red stripes. While not every poem in Emily Caroline Oliphant’s Socks directly concerns the role of women on the home front of World War I, the most noteworthy of the book’s 27 poems, “Socks,” details the almost laughable frustration of the limited contributions a woman could make in contrast to her husband’s sacrifices: “Tis little a woman can do when fighting is to the fore; / True, she can send her menkind now as in days of yore; /... But every minute to spare she knits for her soldier—socks.” The book’s title page bears the information that it was …

Photograph of the cover of "The Bombing of Bruges" by Paul Bewsher, held by UNT Special Collections. The pale blue cover has the title at the top and author at the bottom, all imprinted in dark blue lettering.

Photographs of "Echoes of France" by Amy Robbins Ware, held by UNT Special Collections. The cover is dark blue with a rubricated title and illustration enclosed in a black-stamped frame. Image 2, inscription on inside of cover written in pencil. On the left page is a stamped design. This image in Echoes from France by Amy Robbins Ware, an American nurse in France during WWI, demonstrates the kind of tensions generated by the coexistence of photographs and text. Image 3, pages 40 and 41. The page on the left has a black and white photo of a woman in a dress and gas mask, the page on the right a poem titled "J'attends, C'est la Guerre." Although the book contains no photographs of abject gore, it does feature this photo of a woman with a gas mask as a haunting reminder of such horror and an effacement of the familiar, such that the woman now wears the large dark eyes and proboscis reminiscent of insect life. The text at the bottom works against the tone of estrangement by way of the domesticating rhetoric of “little tin derby” in the place of “helmet.” The diminutive qualifier is not supported by the …

Photographs of "Fifes and Drums: Poems of America at War," held by UNT Special Collections. The brown book cover has the title in dark blue in the top right corner in a white label, framed by a dark blue line. Image 2, title page. On the left page is a list of The Vigilante books inside a box, and on the right page is the title page with a small upside down triangle with the letter D in it.

Photographs of "The Flying Parliament" by Edwina S. Babcock, held by UNT Special Collections. The book is open to a dedication page, which is a note written in pen handwriting. The name Donald Thomas 1973 is at the top. On the top left side is the word "Poetry" written in pencil. The cover is red with an intricate gold design over most of the page, the title is in the middle of the cover in gold.

Photographs of "History and Rhymes of the Lost Battalion" by Lee C. McCollum, held by UNT Special Collections. The second image is open to two poems, the one on the left tiled "Our Commander" and the one on the right "Up There." On each side and bottom of the page is an illustration of field workers, the bottom part being the ground. Each page also has a dedication. Image 3, poem titled "My Pals" expanding over two pages. On the outer part of each page is part of an illustration of things like soldiers lying on the ground and someone in a gas mask. Image 1, dark blue cover of the book with the title and author in gold lettering. In the top left corner is a red, white and blue stripe.

Photographs of the book "Main Street and Other Poems" by Joyce Kilmer, held by UNT Special Collections. The title page is opened up, with the title and author in a rectangular frame. Under it is a graphic of a house and tree, and below it the publishing company. Image 2, the cover of Main Street. The pale brown book has a white label on the front with the title in it.

Photographs of "Men, Women and Ghosts" by Amy Lowell, held by UNT Special Collections. The book is blue with a green spine, the title on a white label at the top framed by lines. Image 2, title page with the page on the left containing publishing information. Amy Lowell's Men, Women, and Ghosts, per her own preface, is meant to be an authentic window into the experience of WWI. It is a collection of 30 poems that had been published five times before this 1919 impression. The reprinting was made possible by electrotype. It was published in New York, but an earlier printing where the electrotype was produced occurred in Norwood, Massachusetts. In the preface Lowell discusses which poems she chose to include in the collection. She excludes “purely lyrical poems” (ix) because she is more concerned with experimenting with vers libre, or free verse that does not subscribe to standardized rhyming and metrical schemes. Lowell classifies many of her poems as “polyphonic prose” and was a forerunner of experimentation with the prose poem in English. Many of her poems in the collection have elements of prose, including “Pickthorn Manor” a story about a woman whose sweetheart is on the …

Photograph of page 43 from "The One-Legged Man" by Siegfried Sassoon, held by UNT Special Collections. The page on the right is titled "The One-Legged Man." 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 as a “citizen of life.” The irony of the poem …

Photographs of "Poems and Drawings" by Henry L. Field, held by UNT Special Collections. The worn cover is dark blue with the title in a white label no the top left corner of the page with the year 1916. Image 2, title page of "Poems and Drawings." Image 3, frontispiece with an image of a mustached man in uniform, the picture labeled "Henry Field, 1894-1916." The author of this collection, Henry Field, served in World War I and died in service on July 1, 1916. The book includes poems written between 1912 and 1916. The preface at the beginning of the book is written by R.F. This could be Field’s mother, Ruth Field, but is more than likely his brother, Richard Field. In addition to supplying the preface, R.F. acts as an editor, making choices about which poems to include and which to omit. There are 26 poems in total, with subject matter ranging from WWI soldiers and death, to Christmas during the war, to unrequited love. There are also poems addressed to specific people, including J.C.F. (most likely Henry’s sister, Jessie). The book includes illustrations by Henry Field as well, which are reproduced lithographically. At the end of the …

Photographs of "Poems" by Isaac Rosenberg, held by UNT Special Collections. The cover is light blue with the title printed on the top right corner. Image 2, frontispiece and title page. The frontispiece has a black and white photo of a man in a colored jacket. Image 3, "The Dying Soldier" poem on the left page and "Dead Man's Dump" on the right, the pages numbered 88 and 89.

Photographs of "Poems" by Wilfred Owen, held by UNT Special Collections. The first image is of the title page, the page to its left covered by a thin brown slip. Image 2, frontispiece showing an image of a young mustached man in uniform. Image 3, "Dulce Et Decorum Est." The text on the left page has three sections numbered IV-VI. The page on the right is titled Dulce and numbered page 15. Wilfred Owen’s poem “Dulce et Decorum Est” stands as the most widely anthologized example of a poem by a WWI soldier who positions his passion and vision in direct opposition to the euphemistic rhetoric about war so prevalent in patriotic verse and political discourse. That said, part of its persuasive strategy is that of rooting its vision in the immediacy of the personal, such that whatever didactic energy of the closure grows out of a dramatic context and the sense of personal authority gathered in the process. Much of the success of this structure relies upon a series of “turns,” or “voltas,” that delineate the poem’s development. The immediate physicality and collective sweep of perspective will be critical to the gathering force of argument. The first turn (“Gas! …

Photographs of "Songs of Men" by Robert Frothingham, held by UNT Special Collections. The book is opened up to the title page, the title at the top and publishing information at the bottom with an orange graphic in the middle. Image 1, cover of "Songs of Men." The cover is yellow with stains at the top and with a black spine.. The black title is stamped at the top followed by a black circular graphic.

Photographs of "Sword Blades and Poppy Seed" by Amy Lowell, held by UNT Special Collections. The first image is of the blue/grey spine with a label at the top of it containing the title. Image 2, the book opened up to the title page, with the left page containing publishing information.

Photographs of ""There Are No Islands, Any More": Lines Written in Passion and in Deep Concern for England, France and My Own Country" by Edna St. Vincent Millay, held by UNT Special Collections. The pale blue/green cover has the title in navy blue inside of a curved frame design. Image 2, title page of the book, with the page on the left containing a list of other books by Millay. At 10 pages long, Edna St. Vincent Millay’s There Are No Islands, Any More is a book containing only one poem. Written on the cusp of World War II, “in Passion and in Deep Concern for England, France and My Own Country,” the poem chides the isolationist stance still prevalent among many Americans amidst the growing threat of Fascism and Nazism. Millay’s patriotism and support of the war contrasts her previous role as a pacifist in World War I, and is epitomized by the book’s copyright page, which bears a statement by Millay: “This poem, written by me in the cause of democracy, has been printed and distributed with my permission, free of royalty to me or profit to my publishers. All proceeds from the sale of this book will …

Photograph of the cover of "The Winnowing Fan: Poems on the Great War" by Laurence Binyon, held by UNT Special Collections. The dark green cover has the name nad author printed at the top of the book in gold lettering.

Letter from Chaplain J. E. Doherty to Miss Shafford, October 13, 1918. In the letter, Doherty is inquiring about their friend in the war and their well-being. Writteno on the envelope reads "Letter, 1918, With U.S. Flag On it, Concerning the well-being of a friend of Miss Shafford in World War".