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‘A Merciful, Heaven-Sent Release’?

2007; Routledge; Volume: 4; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14780038.2007.11425738

1478-0046

Jonathan Wild,

Australian History and Society

This article traces the profound social repercussions that resulted from the mass enlistment of British office workers into the armed forces during the First World War. Drawing heavily upon fictionalized autobiographies of the period, my study examines the various stages of the clerk's experience of the conflict and argues that the confidence gained during warfare by surviving office workers fundamentally shaped a more democratic postwar society. This change is evidenced, I argue, in the profile of the fictional clerk that emerges in British literature after 1918.