Towards a Popular Canon: Education, Young Readers and Authorial Identity in Great Britain between the Wars

Abstract

Defining any literary canon is a complex process, subject to multiple strains of influence. Cultural authorities perpetually identify potential electees, and as such any canon is disputed. Yet conversely its reputed distinction is what defines its existence. In some ways representatives of the First World War canon of poets and writers in England are easier to identify than in other nations, with the help of the National Curriculum and the subsequent GCSE and A-level focus on war poets and writers, namely, Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves. The University of Oxford’s First World War Poetry Digital Archive, which was developed in consultation with and as a tool for educators based at public and state schools in the United Kingdom, also includes Edmund Blunden, Isaac Rosenberg, Edward Thomas, Ivor Gurney, David Jones and Vera Brittain.1 Modern anthologies tend to focus on this group as well, and they also appear in widely referenced collections, including Jon Stallworthy’s Oxford Book of War Poetry (2008).