Isaac Rosenberg: The Making of a Great War Poet: A New Life

by Jean Moorcroft Wilson

Overview

Isaac Rosenberg was among the greatest poets of the First World War. The British-born son of impoversihed Russian Jews, Rosenberg fought as a private in the trenches of the Great Was and died on the Western Front in 1918 as the age of 27. In Isaac Rosenberg, Wilson examines the influence of Rosenberg's class and heritage on his writings, as well as the development of his poetic technique. She traces his maturation from his childhood in Bristol and the Jewish East End of London to art school, his travels to South Africa, and finally his harrowing service as a private in the British Army.
 
Rosenberg was also a gifted painter and this beautifully illustrated volume oncludes some hitherto inseen self-portraits, along with photogrpahs of Rosenberg and his family. Wilson's biogrpahy brings together all known Rosenberg material with a mass of important new discoveries. Isaac Rosenberg is a long-overdue consideration of a remarkable war poet.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780810126046
Publisher:	Northwestern University Press
Publication date:	02/09/2009
Edition description:	1
Pages:	504
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Jean Moorcraft Wilson is a lecturer at Birbeck College, London. She has written acclaimed biogrpahies of Seigfried Sassoon and Charles Hamilton Sorley, which have become standard works in First World War literature.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Author's Note
Map

1. 'My WIld Little Pick-a-Back Days in Bristol'
2. Lost in Translation: an East End Education
3. 'The Days of Youth Go By': Apprenticeship
4. 'Art Is Not a Plaything': Bold Court and Birkbeck College
5. The Whitechapel Group
6. 'Lady, You Are My God': Romance, Frustration, and Fulfilment
7. An Introduction to the Slade
8. Serving Two Masters
9. 'His Divided Self': John Rodker, Sonia Cohen and the 'Slot Meter'
10. 'It is All Café Royal Poetry Now': Meeting Edward Marsh
11. South Africa: 'I Have Lived in the Underworld Too Long"
12. 'If You Are Fire': Marda Vanne and Poetry
13. 'On Receiving News of the War'
14. 'No More Free Will Than a Tree': From Cape Town to Enlistment
15. 'Yea I a Soldier': 'This Rat Trap Affair'
16. Moses: a Farewell to England
17. In the Trenches
18. 'The Desolate Land of France'
19. 'Returning, We Hear the Larks' and 'Dead Man's Dump'
20. 'Daughters of War' and a Last Leave-Taking
21. 'When Will We Go On With the Things That Endure?'
22. 'Through These Pale Cold Days'

Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
A Checklist of Paintings and Drawings by Isaac Rosenberg
Family Tree
Acknowledgments
Index

Editorial Reviews

"Wilson is excellent on Rosenberg's life and her comments on his poems are always grounded."
— Frances Spalding, Daily Mail


"Admiring and devotedly researched . . . Wilson's account, incorporating new findings, is the fullest we are ever likely to get of his life."

—John Carey, Sunday Times

From the Publisher