2) Fiction: The Approach of War and
Early Days
Fiction: The Approach of War and Early Days
Last week, I started posting
my latest list—admittedly partly a recycling of my earlier War List, but this
time organized in a hopefully more helpful way. The first section of the list featured World War II memoirs or diaries by British
women. Now, part 2 of the list focuses on fiction set (and in most cases
written) during the years immediately before the war broke out and in the
earliest days. As a reminder, here are the six sections of the complete list:
1) Diaries/Memoirs
2) Fiction: The Approach of War and Early Days
3) Fiction: The Thick of It
4) Fiction: The Immediate Postwar
5) Fiction: Retrospective (published after 1950)
6) Other Non-fiction (miscellaneous / historical / anthologies / critical)
If you're not an aficionado
of World War II home front fiction, it might seem odd at first to create a separate section focused only on the approach to war and
the war's early days. But on the other hand, I feel like few readers familiar with
fiction from the period would be likely to mistake a title from the first days
of the war for a title published in its final months.
It's rather difficult to nail
down exactly why this is. Certainly, the first years of the war saw publication
of quite a few gung-ho, light-hearted, "England can take it" works of
fiction, epitomized by E. M. Delafield's The
Provincial Lady in Wartime or Angela Thirkell's Cheerfulness Breaks In. That spirit seems to dissipate a bit in works
published later in the war, as the realities of war have made themselves felt
more deeply. Even such an upbeat author as D. E. Stevenson shows a markedly
different tone in The Two Mrs. Abbotts,
from 1943, than she does in Mrs. Tim
Carries On just two years earlier.
In more serious, literary and/or
politically-involved works of fiction, it might be a bit harder to put one's
finger on the difference between 1940, say, and 1945. But it still seems to be
true that, even in works with a serious tone, the characters and situations
presented shift as the war drags on. In The
Rich House by Stella Gibbons, the war is just on the verge of beginning and
is mentioned with some anxiety here and there, but the characters are young and
energetic and full of their own interpersonal problems. By the time Gibbons
published The Bachelor in 1944, her
characters are palpably fatigued and short-tempered, and the rather negative
tone of the novel is perhaps why it's my least favorite work by Gibbons, who is
otherwise a favorite. And her entire tone shifts again by the time
The Matchmaker, set just after the
end of the war and permeated with the relief her characters feel to finally
begin rebuilding their lives, is published in 1949.
What's more, it's difficult to imagine some of the best novels of the late years of the war, such as Elizabeth
Taylor's At Mrs. Lippincote's,
Marghanita Laski's To Bed with Grand
Music, or Norah Hoult's House Under
Mars, with their exhausted, jaded, surly characters, being written a few
years earlier. Perhaps the authors would have felt they had an obligation to
keep up their readers' morale, or perhaps it's just that the authors themselves
weren't feeling the stresses and strains so profoundly in 1940 as they were in
1945 and 1946 when these novels appeared.
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| Winifred Peck |
Either way, though, I felt
there was enough justification to split the two periods into two separate
lists. It's obviously not an exact science, however, and there are, as always,
some books here that I've only read about,
not actually read, so if you think
I've got something wrong, do let me know.
And now, without further ado,
my Top Five for this section of the list:
FURROWED MIDDLEBROW'S FIVE FAVORITE
NOVELS ABOUT THE APPROACH
AND EARLY DAYS OF WORLD WAR II
E. M. DELAFIELD, The Provincial Lady in Wartime (1940)
RACHEL FERGUSON, A Footman for the Peacock (1940)
WINIFRED PECK, Bewildering Cares: A Week in the Life of a Clergyman's Wife (1940)
D. E. STEVENSON, Mrs. Tim Carries On (1941)
ANGELA THIRKELL, Cheerfulness Breaks In (1940)
This section is shorter than
the first, and much shorter than
the next, but it was still hard enough whittling down my favorites to
five. How could I not include Mrs.
Miniver in my top five? Or one of my favorite Stella Gibbons novels, The Rich House? But by the same token, how could I leave out the Provincial Lady,
or my favorite Thirkell, or Winifred Peck's wonderful, underrated tale of the
early days of war in a rectory, or my second-favorite Stevenson, or Rachel
Ferguson's brilliantly hilarious Footman,
which might well be one of my top five favorite novels, period? Decisions,
decisions.
But what would your top five
include?
A P P R O A C H & E A R L Y
D A Y S
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RUTH ADAM, War on Saturday Week (1937)
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Follows a group of
siblings from childhood during World War I to the outbreak of World War II.
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RUTH ADAM, There Needs No Ghost (1939)
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Humorously contrasts
the reactions of villagers and Bloomsburyites to the Munich Crisis.
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ROSE ALLATINI, Family from Vienna (1941)
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Set during and after the
Anschluss among an assimilated Jewish family in London who take in refugee
relatives from Austria.
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MARGERY ALLINGHAM, Traitor's Purse (1941)
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Campion novel set during the phony war; part mystery, part wartime spy
thriller.
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KITTY BARNE, Visitors from London (1940)
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Barne's most famous work, about evacuees on a Sussex farm.
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PHYLLIS BOTTOME, The Mortal Storm (1937)
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Novel warning about
the rise of the Nazis; made into a Hollywood propaganda piece in 1940.
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PHYLLIS BOTTOME, The Life-Line (1946)
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Set in Austria in
1938.
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DOROTHY BOWERS, Shadows Before (1939)
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Mystery novel set as war is looming.
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KATHARINE BURDEKIN, Swastika Night (1937)
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Dystopian novel set after centuries of Nazi and Japanese rule of the
world.
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SARAH CAMPION, Thirty Million Gas Masks (1937)
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Described as "a Near
Future tale predictive of the coming catastrophe."
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JOANNA CANNAN, Death at the Dog
(1939)
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Mystery set in the earliest days of the war.
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ROMILLY CAVAN, Beneath the Visiting
Moon (1940)
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Delightful family comedy of village life and of approaching war getting
in the way of young lovers.
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MARGARET COLE (w. G. D. H. Cole), Murder
at the Munition Works (1940)
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Mystery presumably set in the early days of
the war.
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GWENDOLINE COURTNEY, The Denehurst Secret Service (1940)
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GWENDOLINE COURTNEY, Well Done Denehurst (1941)
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Popular girls' author's adventure tales
involving German spies.
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CLEMENCE DANE, The Arrogant History of White Ben
(1939)
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Allegorical novel about
the rise of Hitler and the Nazis.
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E. M. DELAFIELD, The Provincial Lady in Wartime (1940)
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Follows Delafield's beloved
title character into the early days of the war.
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E. M. DELAFIELD, No One Now Will Know (1941)
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Begins on the cusp of the
war but then flashes back to the 1870s.
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MONICA DICKENS, Mariana (1940)
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Heroine recalls her early life as she waits to hear of her husband's
fate after his ship has been sunk.
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MARY DUNSTAN, Banners in Bavaria (1939)
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Dealing with a
"typical" German family on the brink of the war; praised for its
"extraordinarily impressive picture of Munich on the night of the
Anschluss celebrations."
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JOSEPHINE ELDER, Strangers at the Farm School (1940)
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The last of Elder's Farm School trilogy; the strangers of the title
are Jewish refugees escaping from Hitler.
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RACHEL FERGUSON, A Footman for the Peacock (1940)
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Vivid, hilarious, and distinctly unusual portrait of a terrible family
determined not to face wartime hardships.
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STELLA GIBBONS, The Rich House (1941)
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Follows several young, mismatched couples and an anonymous
letter-writer just on the cusp of the war.
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STORM JAMESON, In the Second Year (1936)
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Dystopian novel about a Fascist takeover of England.
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STORM JAMESON, Cousin Honoré (1940)
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Novel which attempts to examine the causes of the war via the microcosm of a
village in Alsace.
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STORM JAMESON, Europe to Let: The Memoirs of an Obscure
Man (1940)
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A collection of novellas about the rise of Fascism.
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WINIFRED LEAR, The Causeway
(1948)
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Tragicomic tale of life in and around a rectory from the approach of
war to the early days of the Blitz.
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ADELAIDE MANNING (w.
Cyril Henry Coles, as Manning Coles), Drink
to Yesterday (1940)
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ADELAIDE MANNING (w.
Cyril Henry Coles, as Manning Coles), Toast
to Tomorrow (1940, aka Pray Silence)
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ADELAIDE MANNING (w.
Cyril Henry Coles, as Manning Coles), Without
Lawful Authority (1943)
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Light-hearted spy
novels making use of wartime intrigue.
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ANNE MAYBURY, Arise, Oh Sun (1940)
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Romance set in the early days of the war.
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GLADYS MITCHELL, Brazen Tongue (1940)
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Mystery set against a backdrop of air-raid precautions and blackout in
the early days of the war.
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NAOMI MITCHISON, The Blood of the Martyrs (1939)
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According to ODNB,
"attempted to draw parallels between Nero's treatment of early
Christians and Hitler's persecution of the Jews."
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NANCY MITFORD, Pigeon Pie (1940)
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A rather zany spy story set in the earliest days of the war.
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KATE O'BRIEN, The Last of Summer (1943)
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Social drama set
during a two week period in late summer of 1939, just as the war is
beginning.
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CAROLA OMAN, Nothing to Report (1940)
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Takes place in 1939 up
until mid-1940.
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WINIFRED PECK, Bewildering Cares: A Week in the Life of a
Clergyman's Wife (1940)
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Hilarious fictional diary of a rector's wife just as the anxieties of
war are kicking in.
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DORIS POCOCK, Catriona Carries On (1940)
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Girls' story set in the early days of the war.
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EVADNE PRICE, Jane the Patient (1940)
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Wartime entry in her popular Jane series.
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DOROTHY L. SAYERS, "The
Wimsey Papers" (1940)
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Published in the Spectator and apparently never
reprinted, a series of fictional letters between Peter Wimsey, Harriet Vane,
and others of their circle, focused on the early days of the war.
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D. E. STEVENSON, The English Air (1940)
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Set in the last days of peace and first days of war, involving an
English family coping with the approach of war and the son of a Nazi officer
who visits them and has a somewhat different perspective on events.
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D. E. STEVENSON, Mrs. Tim Carries On (1941)
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Stevenson takes her loosely autobiographical alter-ego into the early
months of wartime.
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JAN STRUTHER, Mrs. Miniver (1939)
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One of the most
famous works of the pre-war years, a series of short pieces about a family in
Chelsea, later made into an Oscar-winning film.
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ETHEL M. TALBOT, The Warringtons in War-Time (1940)
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Children's author's foray
into wartime fiction.
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ANGELA THIRKELL, Cheerfulness Breaks In (1940)
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The approach and beginning
of war as hilariously experienced in Barsetshire.
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SYLVIA THOMPSON, The Gulls Fly Inland (1941)
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Set during 1939-1940, but apparently primarily focused on interpersonal
relations.
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P. L. TRAVERS, I Go by Sea, I Go by Land (1941)
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Children's title by Mary Poppins author, dealing with
evacuated children.
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DOROTHY WHIPPLE, The Priory (1939)
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Mentioned by Delafield's Provincial Lady as perfect wartime reading;
set in the final days before the outbreak of war.
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VIRGINIA WOOLF, Between the Acts (1941)
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Highly experimental novel about a village pageant, over which the
threat of war looms in subtle and symbolic ways.
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