Reading Behind the Lines: War Artists, War Poets, Reading and Letter Writing, 1917–1919

Abstract

This chapter focuses on three artists: C. R. W. Nevinson (1889–1946); Eric Henri Kennington (1888–1960) and Charles Sargeant Jagger (1885– 1934). They were roughly the same age and came from a similar professional middle-class background: Nevinson’s father was the highly regarded journalist, war correspondent and essayist Henry W. Nevinson (1856–1941);¹ Kennington’s father was the portraitist and vice president of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters, Thomas Benjamin Kennington (1856–1916);² while Jagger’s father, Enoch (died 1909), was a well-qualified mining engineer who ran a colliery in South Yorkshire.³