"The Vigil of Brunhild" is a poem by an Australian poet and novelist, Frederic Manning. According to the author, the history of humanity was greatly influenced by great women like Lady Macbeth or Cleopatra, which had incredible strength to go against inhuman circumstances. The image of the Queen of Austrasia and Burgundy, Brunhild, was one example. Her extraordinary and tragic fate and power to overcome obstacles inspired the author to create this poem.
In January 1930 Her Privates We appeared in London, advertised as "a record of experience on the Somme and Ancre fronts in 1916" from the pen of "Private 10922, a well known man of letters, already distinguished in another kind of literature." Reviewers praised the novel as the most accurate and moving portrayal yet rendered of the common soldier, and the work quickly became a bestseller. Shortly thereafter the author was revealed as Frederic Manning, a reclusive and little-known author of narrative poetry, philosophical dialogues, and works on Epicurus. An early contributor to Criterion, Manning enjoyed considerable esteem among his peers--T. E. Lawrence, Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, and T. S. Eliot, among others. How did a classical and noncommercial author come to write a grittily realistic war novel? Manning fled from the attendant publicity, avoiding the limelight assiduously and successfully. Marwil's search for the answer to this riddle and for the details of his life (in some ways the search is as interesting and revealing as the results) and his account of Manning's life and work reveal a great deal of the intellectual and social world of Edwardian and Georgian England.
Bruccoli Great War Collection at the University of South Carolina: An Illustrated Catalogue provides a reference tool for the study of one of the great watershed moments in history on both sides of the Atlantic serving historians, researchers, and collectors.
Contains 170 letters selected from the surviving correspondence of two of Modernism's legendary poets. Dating from 1907 until Williams' death in 1963, each letter is reproduced in full and accompanied by explanatory notes. Includes a historical introduction setting the letters in context. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
