Davidson's The Great War

This pocket-sized scrapbook called “The Great War” was compiled by Miss Florence A.G. Davidson (1857-1955), an American-born British journalist and local history writer specialising in church histories. This is a very personal collection, gathered between 1915 and 1926, reflecting how the war and individual soldiers were being publically remembered by newspapers, as well as privately in their own words. The scrapbook is inscribed to Miss Crighton (the Cathedral Librarian). Obituaries and epitaphs for soldiers are copied or pasted in, along with extracts from letters, diaries and poems. 

Several extracts are taken from newspapers, including The Morning Post, Punch and The Times, and include lines attributed to writers still well known today, such as Rudyard Kipling, and those perhaps less well remembered. There are several extracts from the letters of Alan Seeger, an American poet and solider who fought for the French Foreign Legion, joining up in 1914 – before America had joined the war – and killed in action in 1916. 

The poem shown here, ‘He Prayed’, is by Winifred M. Letts, a Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) nurse. Letts’s best known poem is ‘The Deserter’, which sought to empathise with ‘deserters’ of the war as traumatised victims rather than criminals. Originally published in 1916, ‘He Prayed’ also reflects her compassionate attitude to the individuals fighting in the war.