The 1939 State

Steve Ellis’s British Writers and the Approach of World War II diverges from previous studies of Second World War literature by concentrating solely on the period between Chamberlain’s “appeasement” in Munich and the fall of the Chamberlain government in May 1940—a period of uncertainty, Ellis argues, extended to an anxiety over possible political structures that might follow after the war had ended. Concentrating on established writers including T.S. Eliot, E.M. Forster and Virginia Woolf, Ellis’s study maps the rich, discursive contexts surrounding debates over war policy, different forms of possible government and peace aims in 1939 Britain. Although Ellis’s study could have benefited from occasional closer formal engagement, his research adds important detail and nuance to narratives of the development of public attitudes to the approaching war.