1914 and Other Poems (1915) is the posthumous collection of Rupert Brooke, published a few weeks after his death. It opens with the five war sonnets of 1914, among them The Soldier, which made Brooke the poet of the first idealistic months of the First World War.
The war sonnets
Brooke wrote the five sonnets, Peace, Safety, The Dead (two sonnets) and The Soldier, in late 1914, after the Royal Naval Division's expedition to Antwerp. They were first published in the magazine New Numbers in early 1915.
They express a solemn, almost religious acceptance of sacrifice, in which death for England becomes a gift and a purification.
The book
The volume, prepared by his friend Edward Marsh, was published by Sidgwick & Jackson in June 1915, two months after Brooke's death. It also contains poems from his travels in the South Seas, such as Tiare Tahiti, and the earlier Grantchester.
It was reprinted many times during the war and sold hundreds of thousands of copies over the following years.
Reception
In 1915 the sonnets matched the mood of the country, and Brooke's death made them a national monument. Later, poets who fought in the trenches, such as Owen and Sassoon, wrote in a very different spirit.
Brooke's poems are now read as a testimony to the hopes of 1914, before the long slaughter that followed.
Anecdotes
A memoir by Marsh
Edward Marsh, private secretary to Winston Churchill and Brooke's friend, wrote a memoir of the poet published with his Collected Poems in 1918.
Tea at Grantchester
The poem The Old Vicarage, Grantchester, included in the volume, made the village near Cambridge a place of pilgrimage. Visitors still take tea in the Orchard, where Brooke lodged and where students gathered around him before the war.
Frequently asked questions
When was 1914 and Other Poems published?
In June 1915, about two months after Brooke's death on 23 April 1915.
Which sonnets are in the 1914 sequence?
Peace, Safety, The Dead (two sonnets) and The Soldier.
Who edited the book?
Brooke's friend Edward Marsh.