WWI: Dorothea Moore
Mar. 19th, 2025 10:54 amWanted, An English Girl: The Adventures of an English Schoolgirl in Germany, Dorothea Moore. Moore was in the VAD in WWI and her brother Edmund was in the medical corps; this book is dedicated to him. It was published in 1916 and has a “ripped from the headlines” quality to it, and it’s also the first vintage girls’ school (technically - there isn’t any of it set at school) story I’ve read that needs a content warning for sexual violence and torture. It’s available as an ebook from Books to Treasure.
( Wanted is set mainly in Insterburg, a thinly veiled Luxembourg (Moore wrote Ruritanian stories as well as school ones). )
Most of the books I’ve read in this era go on about the atrocities committed by German troops in Belgium, and it’s presented over and over again as a reason for fighting (far more than the invasion itself). The Bryce Report, which looked into these allegations, was published in May 1915, and I am pretty sure Moore was using it as a reference. There is discussion about its accuracy, particularly some of the more lurid stories, but much of it seems supported by events; regardless, it was highly effective as propaganda (the Germans published a retaliatory report about all the horrible things Belgian civilians did to German soldiers and how justified their invasion was, but this appears to be far less based in reality). I was startled by how much violence Moore put in her book, but all these things would have been the topic of daily conversations and in the newspapers.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
regshoe has recommended Moore's Head of the Lower School for more German spies - it's published after WWI but obviously evil does not rest. It's on Gutenberg so I will check it out.
( Wanted is set mainly in Insterburg, a thinly veiled Luxembourg (Moore wrote Ruritanian stories as well as school ones). )
Most of the books I’ve read in this era go on about the atrocities committed by German troops in Belgium, and it’s presented over and over again as a reason for fighting (far more than the invasion itself). The Bryce Report, which looked into these allegations, was published in May 1915, and I am pretty sure Moore was using it as a reference. There is discussion about its accuracy, particularly some of the more lurid stories, but much of it seems supported by events; regardless, it was highly effective as propaganda (the Germans published a retaliatory report about all the horrible things Belgian civilians did to German soldiers and how justified their invasion was, but this appears to be far less based in reality). I was startled by how much violence Moore put in her book, but all these things would have been the topic of daily conversations and in the newspapers.
regshoe has recommended Moore's Head of the Lower School for more German spies - it's published after WWI but obviously evil does not rest. It's on Gutenberg so I will check it out.
