Agnès Cardinal – författare

The First World War inspired a huge outpouring of writing, including many classic accounts of the horrors of the trenches, written by men. What has been less visible until now is the War's impact upon women writers, whose experience was often very different from that of their male counterparts. This anthology brings together women's writing from across the world, covering every genre of writing about the War from the period 1914 to 1930. Letters, diary entries, reportage, and essays, as well as polemical texts in favour of, or in opposition to, the hostilities, offer an interesting counterpoint to the novels and short stories through which women sought to encompass the extremes of wartime life as they saw it. This anthology demonstrates how the Great War acted as a catalyst for women writers, enabling them to find a public voice and to assert their own attitude to social and moral issues.

This anthology consists of ten plays from countries involved in the First World War, including plays from Germany and France never before available in translation.Representing a range of dramatic forms, from radio play to street-epic, from comic sketch to musical, this anthology includes plays from: Gertrude Stein, Muriel Box, Marion Wentworth Craig, Dorothy Hewett, Berta Lask, Marie Leneru, Wendy Lill, Alice Dunbar Nelson, and Christina Reid. Highly successful in their day, these plays demonstrate how women have attempted to use theatre to achieve social change. The collection explores the historical development of theatrical conventions and genres and the historical context of social and gender issues.