Posthumous Lives: World War I and the Culture of Memory

Posthumous Lives explores the shifting significance of public and private efforts to commemorate British soldiers killed in World War I-as well as the less well-remembered casualties of the war, including Voluntary Aid Detachments, nurses, conscientious objectors, civilians, and soldiers executed for desertion or cowardice-and the compelling hold the First World War has had on the British imagination for more than a century. By using the concept of the posthumous life-the attempt to extend the presence of the dead into the lives of the living-Bette London demonstrates how this idea came to shape Britain’s First World War memory practices and rituals.

London draws on a diverse range of source materials-from sentimental memorabilia books commissioned by bereaved families and canonical works of literature and art by Virginia Woolf, Wilfred Owen, and Sir Edwin Lutyens to centenary memorials and commemorative art installations-to uncover the surprising connections between memorialization practices, war writing, and modernism. Spanning the century from the middle of World War I to its centenary celebrations, Posthumous Lives illuminates, in a deeply moving narrative, how the dead are remembered to meet the shifting needs of the living.