SOURCE: Murray, Robert Edward. “Wyndham Lewis and His Fiction of the First World War” Journal of the Short Story in English 14 (spring 1990): 41-62.

In the following essay, Murray views Wyndham Lewis's body of World War I short stories as “an original type of war literature” and “an integral part of his development as a writer.”

Wyndham Lewis and His Fiction of the First World War

The Great War of 1914-18 was the single most important influence on the development of many European intellectuals, including the English Modernist writer and painter Percy Wyndham Lewis. The general effect of this influence was political in the sense that the issues brought up by the war, such as nationalism, socialist revolution and fascist reaction and the moral dilemma of pacificism, formed the basis of the ideological conflict of the period between the wars in which Lewis was a keen participant. Consequently, it...