The Canadian Experience of the Great War: A Guide to Memoirs

Brian Douglas Tennyson

May 2013 · Scarecrow Press

About this ebook

—out of a population of 8 million. More than 150,000 were wounded and nearly 67,000 gave their lives. The war was a pivotal turning point in the history of the modern world, and its mindless slaughter shattered a generation and destroyed seemingly secure values. The literature that the First World War generated, and continues to generate so many years later, is enormous and addresses a multitude of cultural and social matters in the history of Canada and the war itself.

Although many scholars have brilliantly analyzed the literature of the war, little has been done to catalog the writings of ordinary participants: men and women who served in the war and wrote about it but are not included among well-known poets, novelists, and memoirists. Indeed, we don’t even know how many titles these people published, nor do we know how many more titles were added later by relatives who considered the recollections or collected letters worthy of publication. Brian Douglas Tennyson’s The Canadian Experience of the Great War: A Guide to Memoirs is the first attempt to identify all of the published accounts of First World War experiences by Canadian veterans./span/span

About the author

Brian Douglas Tennyson has taught at Cape Breton University in Nova Scotia for many years and is now professor emeritus in its Department of History. He has published 14 books and more than 30 articles in scholarly journals. His book (with Roger Sarty), Guardian of the Gulf: Sydney, Cape Breton, and the Atlantic Wars (2000) won the Keith Matthews Award, given by the Canadian Nautical Research Society, as best book of the year on nautical history.