In the seventy years since World War I the literary reputations of some of its casualities have remained secure: Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen, Saki, Edward Thomas, Appollinaire, Alain-Fournier, for example, have never lacked public or critical recognition. Others, such as the Hungarian Géza Gyóni, the Czech Frantisek Gellner, the German Gustav Sack, the Breton Jean Pierre Calloc'h, or the Armenian Siamant'o, are totally unfamiliar to English-speaking readers.

This is the first book of its kind to look at a broad international cross section of the literary talent cut short in the first modern war of our century. Within are to be found both the familiar and the long-forgotten, some translated into English for the first time.

Some sixty writers from virtually all the combatant nations are represented; there are extracts from their work (with, in the case of poetry, parallel texts in English and the original language), authoritative introductory essays, and full biographical and bibliographical details. An appendix lists some eight hundred writers of all nationalities who are known to have died as a result of World War I. Even that figure can only serve as an example of the millions of lives lost. But it is a potent example.