British poetry between 1914 and 1945 is marked by its growing Anglo-American character. This trend began before World War I with the imagist movement, but once the United States entered the war in 1917, Anglo-American cultural relations became increasingly close and friendly. World War I produced an impressive body of verse; the Depression, a decade later, spawned poetry that was more and more engaged with the social and political problems of their time; while World War II failed to stimulate the remarkable body of work brought on by the First World War. Most of the poets of the 1914-1945 period are individualists, some to the point of being called eccentrics-their work is represented in this DLB volume.

41 entries include: W. H. Auden, John Betjeman, Elizabeth Daryush, C. Day Lewis, Roy Fuller, W. S. Graham, Robert Graves, Wilfred Owen, Ruth Pitter, Isaac Rosenberg, Siegfried Sassoon, Dylan Thomas and Vernon Watkins.