Mary Borden 'The Forbidden Zone'

[MichaelBully]

Found an intriguing article about American nurse Mary Borden, who a volunteer who treated French soldiers on the Western Front, and her memoir 'The Forbidden Zone' from 1929. Overlooked for decades, it was re-published in 2008, and interest in Mary Borden is growing.

By strange coincidence realised that she was born 15th May 1886.

'The Forbidden Zone' is remarkable. A series of impressions of her time at the Western Front, no real attempt at autobiography.

http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/december-2008-no-sign-of-horror-in-the-heavens/

There's more to be found on Borden at Professor Tim Kendall's War Poety blog.

http://war-poets.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/mary-borden.html

[keithmroberts]

She married Spears, the author of Liaison 1914 and several other interesting books. I used to have a library rebound copy of the first printing of her book, but sold it on for a profit. Well worth reading though.

Keith

Edited 14 May , 2014 by Keith Roberts
book title corrected

[seaforths]

How bizarre seeing this post - after a few aborted attempt to get it via an inter-library loan. I ordered a copy online which was delivered today along with Smith's 'Not So Quiet...' I will be starting 'The Forbidden Zone' tonight and look forward to it. Thank you for posting the links. I will return to look at those once I've finished the book.

[CarylW]

Mary Borden and Ellen Newbold la Motte were both American nurses who worked in the same hospital on the Western Front and both wrote of their experiences. Mary Borden wrote 'The Forbidden Zone' and Ellen N. la Motte 'Backwash of War' which is available free online here (and Project Gutenburg):

https://archive.org/details/thebackwashofwar26884gut

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26884

*There's also a book that contains extracts of both books 'Nurses at the Front: Writing the wounds of the Great War

http://www.amazon.com/Nurses-Front-Writing-Wounds-Great/dp/1555534848/ref=pd_cp_b_1d

You can buy it from Amazon UK but I think the American page shows a description and the UK one doesn't..

Probably cheaper though to buy or borrow 'The Forbidden Zone' in it's entirety, and read the other entire one online.

Edit: 'The Backwash of War' now being republished and marketed as 'the book that inspired The Crimson Field'! Really? Thought it was 'Roses of No Man's Land' Lyn Macdonald?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Backwash-War-Inspired-Field-Hospital/dp/1844862585

*I have to credit Sue with passing on the info about the books above. I was thinking of buying the 'Nurses at the front....' book and asked her opinion of it

.

[seaforths]

Mary Borden and Ellen Newbold la Motte were both American nurses who worked in the same hospital on the Western Front and both wrote of their experiences. Mary Borden wrote 'The Forbidden Zone' and Ellen N. la Motte 'Backwash of War' which is available free online here (and Project Gutenburg):

https://archive.org/details/thebackwashofwar26884gut

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26884

*There's also a book that contains extracts of both books 'Nurses at the Front: Writing the wounds of the Great War

http://www.amazon.com/Nurses-Front-Writing-Wounds-Great/dp/1555534848/ref=pd_cp_b_1d

You can buy it from Amazon UK but I think the American page shows a description and the UK one doesn't..

Probably cheaper though to buy or borrow 'The Forbidden Zone' in it's entirety, and read the other entire one online.

Edit: 'The Backwash of War' now being republished and marketed as 'the book that inspired The Crimson Field'! Really? Thought it was 'Roses of No Man's Land' Lyn Macdonald?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Backwash-War-Inspired-Field-Hospital/dp/1844862585

*I have to credit Sue with passing on the info about the books above. I was thinking of buying the 'Nurses at the front....' book and asked her opinion of it

.

Depending where you are with regard to the loan front. I tried to get three books 'The Forbidden Zone' being one of them via an inter-library loan. I was quoted £7.90 per book. I have since purchased 2/3 via the internet for less than that.

I started 'The Forbidden Zone' last night. It's certainly a contrast to what I've read in the past on/by nurses. Metaphor, simile, personification and anthropomorphism laid on with a trowel. I thought initially it was like reading Carol Ann Duffy (whom I quite like reading) but as far as I've got, I found the repetition of the trowel use a bit irritating however, I will stick with it...

[kjharris]

Greetings all,

There is a recent book called First World War Nursing: New Perspectives (eds Fell and Hallett, published by Routledge, 2013) in which Hazel Hutchinson looks at Mary Borden's The Forbidden Zone.

This book also looks at nurses from not just Britain and America but also French, Australia and Cuba in terms of national identies, professional identities and the nurse as witnesses.

cheers

Kirsty

[Sue Light]

Greetings all,

There is a recent book called First World War Nursing: New Perspectives (eds Fell and Hallett, published by Routledge, 2013) in which Hazel Hutchinson looks at Mary Borden's The Forbidden Zone.

This book also looks at nurses from not just Britain and America but also French, Australia and Cuba in terms of national identies, professional identities and the nurse as witnesses.

With a cover price of £80 it's not even available via libraries here other than those at academic institutions. New academic texts are to all intents and purposes closed to the 'average' reader.

Sue

[kjharris]

Wow - had no idea of the cost! If any one wants the Mary Borden chapter, PM me and I'll copy it for you.

cheers

Kirsty

[MichaelBully]

There is a talk about Mary Borden at The British Library, Euston on the evening of Friday 3rd October. 2014 =from the British Library website

http://www.bl.uk/whatson/exhibitions/enduring-war/events/event164401.html

Chicago heiress, society beauty, mother of three and rising literary novelist, Mary Borden left her glamorous lifestyle behind in 1915 to run a French Army hospital at the Western Front. In this talk Hazel Hutchison uncovers the story of how this extraordinary woman found herself at war, and explores her hauntingly powerful book about the conflict, The Forbidden Zone.

Written largely at the Front, Borden’s eerie, humane and sometimes darkly comic account of her time in the war zone, was silenced by censorship regulations when she first tried to publish it in 1917. Eventually issued in 1929 to a public still reluctant to accept the full horrors of the war, The Forbidden Zone reveals the terrible ironies of nursing under military command, and tells a little-known story of American idealism and service in the early years of the war.

Hazel Hutchison is the President of the Henry James Society and the Director of the Centre for the Novel at the University of Aberdeen. Her latest book, The War That Used Up Words: American Writers in a European Conflict, 1914-1918, will be published by Yale University Press later this year.

This event is sponsored by the Eccles Centre for American Studies

[MaureenE]

Available online 

The Forbidden Zone by Mary Borden 1929. A transcription. American Field Service website. A later (2008) edition was published under the title The Forbidden Zone : a Nurse's Impressions of the First World War.

 

Cheers

Maureen

[Marilyne]

Just finished this little gem!! 

Poignant stories, some make  you laugh, some make you cry... all in all it's a very powerful account of one ladie's exceptional effort. 

all other words of praise have already been said about this, so I have just one thing to add: if you haven't yet, READ THIS !! 

 

M.