An astonishing discovery was made in 1995 during the British
Library's removal from the British Museum. Thirty-four letters and
eighteen draft poems, including "Break of Day in the Trenches",
"Dead Man's Dump", and "Returning, We Hear the Larks" by the poet
and artist Isaac Rosenberg were found in a bundle of papers stored
by former museum keeper Laurence Binyon, himself a poet and
Rosenberg's mentor. After his death as a private soldier on the
Western Front on 1 April 1918, Isaac Rosenberg, now regarded as a
major poet of the First World War, was largely forgotten, and only
the devotion of his family and the support of his fellow poets
rescued his work for posterity. Binyon and another older poet,
Gordon Bottomley, encouraged and corresponded with Rosenberg until
his death, and then edited his poems and extracts from his letters
for publication. The newly discovered papers include all
Rosenberg's complete letters and draft poems to Binyon and
Bottomley, together with material about Rosenberg from family,
friends and mentors such as his sister Annie, Whitechapel librarian
Morley Dainow, schoolteacher Winifreda Seaton, and patron Frank
Emmanuel. All are published here, most for the first time. At first
overshadowed by the more acceptably English war poets, Rosenberg's
poetry did not fit the poetic ideals of the time, just as he, an
East End Jew born of immigrant parents, did not present the
accepted public image of the heroic soldier poet. The originality
and strength of his poetry were rooted in the struggle with the
opposing elements of his life, which did not follow the conventions
of any role he played: East End Jew, poet, painter or soldier. In
one unpublished letter from the trenches he reveals his
difficulties, 'I don't suppose my poems will ever be poetry right
and proper until I shall be able to settle down and whip myself
into more expression. As it is, my not being able to get poetry out
of my head & heart causes me sufficient trouble out here.'
(Letter to Bottomley, postmarked 11 July 1917)
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