Reading, Trauma and Literary Caregiving 1914-1918: Helen Mary Gaskell and the War Library

Abstract

This article is about the relationship between reading, trauma and responsive literary caregiving in Britain during the First World War. Its analysis of two little-known documents describing the history of the War Library, begun by Helen Mary Gaskell in 1914, exposes a gap in the scholarship of war-time reading; generates a new narrative of "how," "when," and "why" books went to war; and foregrounds gender in its analysis of the historiography. The Library of Congress's T. W. Koch discovered Gaskell's ground-breaking work in 1917 and reported its successes to the American Library Association. The British Times also covered Gaskell's library, yet researchers working on reading during the war have routinely neglected her distinct model and method, skewing the research base on war-time reading and its association with trauma and caregiving. In the article's second half, a literary case study of a popular war novel demonstrates the extent of the "bitter cry for books." The success of Gaskell's intervention is examined alongside H. G. Wells's representation of textual healing. Reading is shown to offer sick, traumatized and recovering combatants emotional and psychological caregiving in ways that she could not always have predicted and that are not visible in the literary/historical record.Keywords First world war . Reading . Trauma . Literary caregiving . Helen Mary Gaskell . War library In July 1937, the Book Trolley, the magazine of the guild of hospital librarians, published a brief history of libraries in hospitals. Owing to the writer's (self-confessed) advanced age and poor health, the piece was shorter than it might have been. Mrs. Gaskell, C.B.E., knew that in different circumstances she could have written Ba good deal on the Past.^But she welcomed the opportunity to provide an account of the Bdifficulties and influences^under which libraries in hospitals had begun, and she returned to two international conflicts to do so: the Boer War This article is about Helen Mary Gaskell's War Library and the model of literary caregiving on which it was founded -and so it is also concerned with the early history of what would become known as bibliotherapy.1 Gaskell chose a quotation from Titus Andronicus to head her 1918 pamphlet: BTake choice of all my Library, and so beguile thy sorrow^ (1918, 1). The second half of this article presents a case study which demonstrates, using contemporary evidence, the ways in which books did help to Bbeguile sorrow,^having placed Gaskell and her library accurately in the history of reading during the First World War.This scholarship, a currently vibrant area of book history, mostly adopts the analytical framework first established by Robert Darnton in 1986. We now know more about the Bwhat,B where,^and Bhow^of reading during the conflict than ever before (Darnton 2014, 165). 2 We also know more about the Bwho^-as the historic focus on élite readers (as an extension from élite writers) has been challenged by more inclusive, broader assessments (Sutcliffe 2016, King 2014b, Ja...

Bibliotherapy in the Historical Process and the Place of Libraries in This Process

“…ALA, hastaneler ve rehabilitasyon merkezleri gibi diğer kuruluşlara kütüphane hizmetleri sağlamak için YMCA, Columbus Şövalyeleri (the Knights of Columbus) ve Amerikan Kızıl Haçı (American Red Cross) ile birlikte çalışmıştır. Haslam (2020), bir çalışmasında, Birinci Dünya Savaşı sırasında İngiltere'de savaş travması ve okuma arasındaki bağlantıyı irdeleyerek, az bilinen belgeler üzerinden, 1914'te Helen Mary Gaskell tarafından başlatılan çalışmalara değinmektedir. Söz konusu çalışmalara ilişkin belgeler, kitapların "nasıl", "ne zaman" ve "neden" savaşa dâhil edildiğine dair yeni bir anlatı üretmiştir.…”

“…Gaskell'in başarılı çalışması, okumanın, hasta, travma geçirmiş ve iyileşmekte olan savaşçılara duygusal ve ruhsal olarak destek sunduğuna işaret etmektedir. Haslam (2018), bir diğer yazısında, savaş ilan edilir edilmez yaralı askerlere yardım etmek için Gaskell'in katkıları ile Londra'da başlatılan hizmetleri, yazınsal/edebi bakım (literary caregiving) olarak nitelemektedir. Bu süreçte, Gaskell'in vizyonu, bağışlanmış kitaplarla dolu bir kütüphanedir.…”