Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2014
Department 1
Civil War Institute
Abstract
Literature concerning aerial warfare was a new genre created by the First World War. With manned flight in its infancy, there were no significant novels or memoirs of pilots in combat before 1914. It was apparent to British publishers during the war that the new technology afforded a unique perspective on the battlefield, one that was practically made for an expanding literary marketplace. As such former Royal Flying Corps pilots created a new type of war book, one written by authors self-described as “Knights in the Air”, a literary mythology carefully constructed by pilots and publishers and propagated in the inter-war period through flight memoirs. [excerpt]
Copyright Note
This is the publisher's version of the work. This publication appears in Gettysburg College's institutional repository by permission of the copyright owner for personal use, not for redistribution.
Recommended Citation
Isherwood, Ian A., “’To fly is more fascinating than to read about flying’: British R.F.C. Memoirs of the First World War, 1918-1939.” War, Literature and the Arts 26 (2014), 1-20.
Required Publisher's Statement
Original version is available from the publisher at: http://wlajournal.com/archive.aspx
Included in
European History Commons, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine Commons, Military and Veterans Studies Commons, Military History Commons, Oral History Commons, Public History Commons, Social History Commons