Unshaken world!/Another day of light/After the human/Chaos of the night'

With these words - a vivid mingling of hope and despair - Frances Cornford protested against the terrible brutality of war. Here, in a collection of women's poetry from the Second World War, eighty-seven poets record the devastating upheavals it caused with its attendant partings, separations, bereavements. Whether as civilians or as auxiliary servicewomen, these women write of the fear of air attacks, of children's response to evacuation, of their horror of Nazi persecution. But they convey too the sweet expectation of peace, of reunion and rebirth. Amongst the poets, some known and many less known, are Phyllis Shand Allfrey, Elaine Feinstein, F. Tennyson Jesse, Naomi Mitchison, Edith Sitwell, Stevie Smith and Sylvia Townsend Warner.

Catherine Reilly was born in Stretford and educated in Manchester, held an M.Litt. from Oxford University and was a specialist on the poetry of the two world wars. She died, aged 80, in September 2005.