Trench Literature: Reading in Word War I by Richard Davies, Udo Goellmann & Sara Melendre. What were the doughboys reading? Rudyard Kipling, H.G. Wells, John Buchan, Nat Gould, W.W. Jacobs, Captain R.. Campbell, and anything else they could get their hands on to alleviate the boredom of the trenches.

This writer thinks that the Most Influential Poem of the Twentieth Century was published in 1915. Can you guess the poem, or at least the poet, before you look?
HINT: “Do I dare disturb the universe?”

John Buchan’s spy novel The Thirty-nine Steps was published in 1915. Here it is reviewed by Woman of the House. There’s a Hitchcock movie version of this adventure story, and also a Masterpiece Theater movie adaptation that has been recommended. Has anyone here seen either one?

The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion is a 1915 novel by English novelist Ford Madox Ford. It is set just before World War I and chronicles the tragedy of Edward Ashburnham, the eponymous soldier, and his seemingly perfect marriage.

Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis was first published in 1915. The original German title was Die Verwandlung. We read this classic horror novella for our 20th century class, and Brown Bear Daughter called it the “cockroach book.” She refused to look at the cover which had a picture of a giant bug on it. I don’t blame her. Herr Kafka would have not liked the picture either since he told his publisher in a letter: “The insect itself is not to be drawn. It is not even to be seen from a distance.” I looked at Amazon, and most of the covers do have a picture of some kind of bug. This one is one of the few that I found that Kafka might have approved.

Also in 1915, W. Somerset Maugham published his most famous book, Of Human Bondage. I’ve heard of the book all my (reading) life, but I’ve not read it. Recommended or not?