SOURCE: Willis, J. H. Jr. “The Censored Language of War: Richard Aldington's Death of a Hero and Three Other War Novels of 1929.” Twentieth-Century Literature 45, no. 4 (winter 1999): 467-87.

In the following essay, Willis considers how the political and cultural climate in Britain and America contributed to the censorship of four war novels by Richard Aldington, Erich Maria Remarque, Ernest Hemingway, and Frederick Manning.

When Richard Aldington published his first novel, ironically titled Death of a Hero, in September 1929, he had his English publisher Chatto & Windus include a note on how his manuscript had differed from the printed text. In it he said:

To my astonishment, my publisher informed me that certain words, phrases, sentences, and even passages, are at present taboo in England. I have recorded nothing which I have not observed in human life, said nothing I do not believe to be true. I had not the slightest...