Einhaus - The Penguin Book of First World War Stories

The Bowmen from The Collected Arthur Machen by Arthur Machen, copyright 1988 by The Estate of Arthur Machen. Published by Gerald Duckworth. Reprinted by permission of A. M. Heath & Co. Ltd.

Private MeyrickCompany Idiot from Men, Women and Guns by Sapper Herman Cyril McNeile. Published by Hodder & Stoughton.

A Trade Report Only from Fiery Particles by C. E. Montague. Published by Chatto & Windus.

Victory from Roads to Glory by Richard Aldington, copyright 1930 by The Estate of Richard Aldington. Published by Chatto & Windus. Reprinted by permission of Rosica Colin Ltd.

Heroes by Anne Perry from Murder and Obsession, ed. Otto Penzler, copyright 1999 by Anne Perry. Published by Orion. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Blind from The Forbidden Zone by Mary Borden, published by William Heinemann. Reprinted by permission of Duff Hart-Davis.

An Indiscreet Journey from Something Childish and Other Stories by Katherine Mansfield. Published by Constable. Reprinted by permission of Constable & Robinson Ltd.

The Tale from the Complete Short Fiction of Joseph Conrad, Vol. 2, by Joseph Conrad. Published by Pickering.

Chanson Triste by Arthur Walter Wells from Best Short Stories of 1925, ed. Edward J. OBrien. Published by Jonathan Cape.

His Last Bow by Arthur Conan Doyle from Strand Magazine.

Giulia Lazzari from Ashenden by W. Somerset Maugham. Published by William Heinemann. Reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Ltd.

The Loathly Opposite from The Runagates Club by John Buchan, copyright 1928 by The Estate of John Buchan. Published by Thomas Nelson. Reprinted by permission of A. P. Watt Ltd.

Mary Postgate from A Diversity of Creatures by Rudyard Kipling. Published by Macmillan.

Them Others by Stacy Aumonier from Great Short Stories of the War, ed. H. C. Minchin. Published by Eyre & Spottiswoode.

Told by the Schoolmaster from Forsytes, Pendyces and Others by John Galsworthy. Published by William Heinemann.

Tickets, Please from England, My England by D. H. Lawrence. Published by Thomas Seltzer.

Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself from Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself by Radclyffe Hall. Published by William Heinemann. Reprinted by permission of Jonathan Lovat Dickson/A. M. Heath & Co. Ltd.

Nobody from The Thirteen Travellers by Hugh Walpole. Published by Hutchinson.

Once a Hero by Harold Brighouse from Best British Short Stories of 1922, eds. Edward J. OBrien and John Cournos. Published by Longmans Green.

The Fly from The Doves Nest by Katherine Mansfield. Published by Constable. Reprinted by permission of Constable & Robinson Ltd.

The Casualty List from Truth Is Not Sober by Winifred Holtby. Published by Collins. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

Christmas Truce from Collected Short Stories by Robert Graves, copyright 1962 by The Estate of Robert Graves. Published by Cassell. Reprinted by permission of Carcanet Press Ltd.

The First Year of My Life by Muriel Spark from The Penguin Book of British Comic Short Stories, ed. Patricia Craig, copyright 1975 by The Estate of Muriel Spark. Published by Viking. Reprinted by permission of David Higham Associates Ltd.

Company by Robert Grossmith from The Minerva Book of Short Stories 3, eds. Giles Gordon and David Hughes, copyright 1989 by Robert Grossmith. Published by Mandarin. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Evermore from Cross Channel by Julian Barnes, copyright 1996 by Julian Barnes. Published by Jonathan Cape (UK) and Alfred A. Knopf (USA). Reprinted by permission of Jonathan Cape, an imprint of The Random House Group Ltd, and by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders. The publishers would be interested to hear from any copyright holders not here acknowledged, and will be pleased to rectify any mistakes or omissions in subsequent editions.

The editors wish to thank Adam Freudenheim and Mariateresa Boffo at Penguin for making this project possible and supporting us over the long months of preparing this book. Professor Franz-Josef Brggemeier, Professor Wolfgang Hochbruck and Mr Taff Gillingham provided valuable hints for the annotations. We also thank Dr Stefanie Lethbridge, Christina Spittel, Johanna Kunze and Nikolaus Reusch for assisting with researching the notes and reading early stages of the manuscript.

Aldington, Richard (18921962)

Born in Portsmouth as Edward Godfree Aldington, he grew up in Dover. He studied at University College, London, but left without a degree to become a writer and journalist. In 1912 Aldington joined the Imagist movement, and edited the avant-garde literary periodical the Egoist. He was a close friend of Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot and D. H. Lawrence. He went to France as a soldier in mid-1916 and remained in the army until the end of the war. Soon afterwards he published a collection of poems, Images of War (1919), and his novel Death of a Hero (1929) deals with what he perceived as the soldiers archetypal experience of the war: profound disillusionment with and loss of faith in humanity.

Aumonier, Stacy (18871928)

The descendant of an old Huguenot family, Aumonier was an artist before he turned to writing in 1913. John Galsworthy regarded him as one of the best short-story writers of all time; and A. C. Ward claimed, in his Aspects of the Modern Short Story (1924), that Aumoniers war stories resembled an English epic of the Great War (252). Aumonier captured the varied reactions to war of his fellow countrymen, and portrayed the destruction of what many thought of as an English pre-war idyll in The Match (1916).

Barnes, Julian (1946)

Educated in London and at Oxford, Barnes has worked as a lexicographer, reviewer, editor and television critic. He is now a full-time writer and occasional translator, and lives in London. He has published crime fiction under the pseudonym Dan Kavanagh. For his serious novels, Barnes has won numerous awards, both in Britain and abroad, and his works have been shortlisted frequently for the Man Booker Prize. To date, he has published two volumes of short stories Cross Channel (1996) and The Lemon Table (2004).

Borden, Mary (18861968)

Born in Chicago, the daughter of a businessman. While travelling in Europe at the outbreak of the war, Borden decided to set up a hospital unit on the Western Front. She stayed in France for the duration, and was awarded the Croix de Guerre by the French government. She met her second husband, Edward Spears, while serving in France, and went to live with him in England. Of Bordens novels, Sarah Gay (1931)is also loosely based on her own war experiences. Her collection of sketches, poetry and short stories, The Forbidden Zone (1929), derives entirely from her war experiences.

Brighouse, Harold (18821958)

Brighouse grew up in Manchester as the son of a businessman, and, after an apprenticeship in a company selling shipping equipment, went to work in the cotton trade. In 1902 he moved to London, where he embarked on his writing career. Brighouse was a prolific playwright, who also wrote eight novels, a number of short stories and worked as literary critic of the Manchester Guardian. Many of his plays feature Lancastrians, and the factory setting of Once a Hero may also owe much to his roots in a manufacturing town.

Buchan, John (18751940)

Educated in Glasgow and at Oxford, Buchan was a barrister, journalist, publisher and politician. He wrote and published his first novels while still at university. During the war he was a correspondent for