Books and Art

The Razor’s Edge. W. Somerset Maugham. Doubleday, 1944. First edition. Original dust jacket. “The sharp edge of a razor is difficult to pass over; thus the wise say the path to Salvation is hard.”

Tells the story of Larry Darrell, an American pilot traumatized by his experiences in WW I, who sets off in search of some transcendent meaning in his life. His rejection of conventional life and search for meaningful experience allows him to thrive while the more materialistic characters suffer reversals of fortune.

Marie of Romania reading.

Marie of Romania (Marie Alexandra Victoria, previously Princess Marie of Edinburgh; 1875–1938) was Queen consort of Romania from 1914 to 1927, as the wife of Ferdinand of Romania.

A.L. Easterman writes that King Ferdinand was “a quiet, easy-going man, of no significant character… It was not he, but Marie who ruled in Romania.” He credits Marie’s sympathies for the Allies as being “the major influence in bringing her country to their side” in the war.

“Hey Fellows!” John E. Sheridan. Your money brings the book we need when we want it. American Library Association, United War Work Campaign, Week of November 11, 1918.

When the US entered World War I, the American Library Association became a major participant. The organization created the Library War Service under the direction of Herbert Putnam, the Librarian of Congress. The ALA led the effort to provide books to soldiers and sailors in the armed forces.

The African Queen. C. S. Forester. Bantam Books 712. Published 1949; second printing (first published 1935). Cover Artist: Ken Riley.

As WW I reaches the heart of the African jungle, Charlie Allnutt and Rose Sayer, a dishevelled trader and an English spinster missionary, find themselves thrown together by circumstance. Fighting time, heat, malaria, and bullets, they make their escape on the rickety steamboat The African Queen…and hatch their own outrageous military plan. 

Black Hat (1929-30). Jean McLane (1878–1964). Oil on canvas

McLane and her husband, artist John C. Johansen (1876-1964) help found the National Foundation of Portrait Painters in 1912. In that same year, she was invited by a group of philanthropists to depict the Allied Leaders from WW I. McLane provided the only female subject, Queen Elisabeth of Belgian.

Poster. The Camp Library is Yours (1917). C.B. Falls / American Library Association.

“Read to Win the War. You will find popular books for fighting men in the recreational buildings and at other points in this camp. Free. No red tape. Open every day. Good reading will help you advance. Library War Service, American Library Association.”

Source Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C.

Compensation (1916). Harrison Fisher. WW I Red Cross nurse and soldier.

During WW I, more than 18,000 Red Cross nurses served with the Army and Navy Nurse Corps. Some of these nurses worked at American base hospitals, at field units, and aboard ships, whereas others served at home combating the 1918 influenza epidemic and providing medical services to military camps, munitions plants, and shipyards.

Reading Verse. Édouard François Zier (French, 1856-1924). Oil on canvas.

Zier exhibited his first painting, Death of Cato of Utica, at the Salon of 1874.

Zier has contributed to numerous journals such as Le Rire, L’Illustration , Le Courrier French, and Le Monde illustrated. In 1917, he was mobilized to the front to draw two Allied stories in collaboration with Maurice Languereau.

Olga Nikolaevna Romanova (1895-1918) was the eldest daughter of Emperor Nicholas II and of Empress Alexandra of Russia.

During World War I, Olga nursed wounded soldiers in a military hospital until her own nerves gave out and, thereafter, oversaw administrative duties at the hospital.

Olga was assassinated along with her family at Ekaterinburg following the Russian Revolution of 1917 which resulted in her canonization as a passion bearer by the Russian Orthodox Church.

A Farewell to Arms (1929). Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961). New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. First edition. Octavo, original cloth, original dust jacket.

Set during the Italian campaign of World War I, the book is a first-person account of American Frederic Henry, serving as a Lieutenant in the ambulance corps of the Italian Army. The title is taken from a poem by 16th-century English dramatist George Peele.

The story focuses on a romance between Henry and a British nurse, Catherine Barkley, against the backdrop of WW I, cynical soldiers, fighting and the displacement of populations.

“I’m not brave any more darling. I’m all broken. They’ve broken me.” ― Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

All Quiet on the Western Front (1929). Erich Maria Remarque (1898-1970). First English language edition. Original dust cover. The design is based upon a German war bonds poster by Fritz Erler.

A veteran of the trenches, Remarque graphically describes the slaughter that robbed Europe of its young men. His narrator is a young German soldier.

“Trenches, hospitals, the common grave—there are no other possibilities.” — Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet On The Western Front.

Over There (1992). Thomas Fleming. Harper Collins. First edition.

During the First World War, Polly Warden, a feminist and former pacifist, acts both as a nurse in a frontline French hospital and an ambulance driver on the British and American fronts, while friends and former lovers fight.

“avoir le cafard” — Men stationed in the deserts of colonial Algeria and Morocco would grow so depressed they would go mad and start shooting cockroaches, each other and themselves. Supposedly deaths from Le Cafard exceeded deaths from combat.

Daddy, what did YOU do in the Great War? (1915). Savile Lumley (active 1910-50). British propaganda poster from World War I, commissioned by The British Parliamentary Recruiting Committee.

Until conscription was introduced in 1916, recruitment posters were an essential element in attracting young men to the armed forces during the ‘Great War’ of 1914-1918. Savile Lumley’s poster has become one of the best known because of its tone of emotional blackmail. The idea was actually that of a printer, Arthur Gunn, who imagined himself as the father in question. In fact, after having a sketch of the scene made up by Lumley in 1915, Gunn joined the Westminster Volunteers.

The propaganda message to the public clearly is: Do not become somebody like Daddy. 

YMCA (1918). Haskell Coffin. (1878-1941). A versatile illustrator, whose illustrations graced covers for several magazines, including Redbook and The American. WW I posters are well known.

World War I saw many women taking traditionally men’s jobs for the first time in American history. Many worked on the assembly lines of factories, producing tanks, trucks and munitions. The morale of the women remained high, as millions joined the Red Cross as volunteers to help soldiers and their families, and with rare exceptions, the women did not protest the draft.

Books Wanted, WW I Poster, USA, 1918 (made). Charles Buckles Falls (1874-1960). American Association of Libraries (printers and publishers). Colour lithography

This appeal emphasized the bond between the home front and front line. It offered people at home a means of supporting their soldiers. Falls prepared the design within a day and it boosted his reputation as well as succeeding in its purpose of collecting reading material for the troops.