Ariane Bankes

Front Lines

David Jones in the Great War

By

Enitharmon Press 228pp £15 order from our bookshop

When the artist David Jones’s book-length meditation on the Great War, In Parenthesis, was published in 1937 by Faber, it established him immediately as one of the most singular poets of the day. T S Eliot, who championed Jones at Faber, was delighted to discover in this ‘work of genius’ an entirely original voice, one that combined a startling modernism with a sensibility drenched in myth and history. The 40,000-word epic of prose and verse that reimagined Jones’s experiences as a private at the Western Front with extraordinary immediacy and depth was garlanded with praise, winning the Hawthornden Prize in 1938, then the only literary prize worth winning.

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • 'One of the reasons for its longevity is that it has virtually nothing to say about science and technology at all,… ,
    • 'The characters in many of these stories are trapped in the obsessive present tense of their own thoughts; in the m… ,
    • 'Libraries, for much of their existence, have embodied in microcosm many of the characteristics of the totalitarian… ,
    • 'Moss and Cynthia buy several properties through which to launder their ill-gotten gains, take lots of drugs, have… ,
    • 'Never mind the imperial cult. This is the cult of Boris. What happened to Rome?' From the LR archive:… ,
    • Thirty-two years ago this month, we published Muriel Spark's short story, 'A Playhouse Called Remarkable' Read it… ,
    • Time travel, bicycles and white horses populate @WomackPhilip's roundup of children's books by @marcussedgwick,… ,
    Follow Us