Risby Posted 10 December , 2003 Share Posted 10 December , 2003 Highly praised (and promoted) by T E Lawrence, Manning's account of the daily toil of an articulate potential officer was released in this expurgated version to avoid offence. Manning's soldiers swear and 'curse the staff for incompetent swine'. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clive Maier Posted 11 December , 2003 Share Posted 11 December , 2003 ... released in this expurgated version to avoid offence ... The review is suggestive of a jacket note for a particular edition. There is no need to mess around with Bowdlerised versions. The paperback edition published in 1999 by Serpent’s Tail restores all the cuts and sanitisations made when the privately published The Middle Parts of Fortune was released commercially as Her Privates We. The name is retained for the restored edition because it had become so well known and recognised. I understand the uncensored version had been available for quite a while before the Serpent’s Tail edition came out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David_Blanchard Posted 11 December , 2003 Share Posted 11 December , 2003 His father was mayor of Sydney at the turn of the century. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Henschke Posted 2 January , 2004 Share Posted 2 January , 2004 Frederick Manning was born in Sydney in 1882. He was privately tutored and moved to the UK in 1903. In 1914 he joined the 7th Battalion King's Shropshire Light Infantry as a private. Some time later, I'm not sure how but it was 1917, he joined the 3rd Battalion Royal Irish Regiment. He died in England in the 1930's. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stephen Barker Posted 7 January , 2004 Share Posted 7 January , 2004 The best and most authentic novel to have come out of the Great War. Blunden, Sassoon and Graves read vapid compared to this. Read it! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andigger Posted 8 December , 2004 Share Posted 8 December , 2004 I noticed this book was on several people's list of the best WWI books they read, so I thought I'd bring this thread up to see if spurs some discussion.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tom Morgan Posted 8 December , 2004 Share Posted 8 December , 2004 The best book to come out of the war, written by someone who was in it, if you ask me. All the more remarkable because the book was nothing like Manning's other work. The majority of Manning's writing is super-intellectual philosophical stuff full of obscure classical references, meticulously-written but rather hard going. Peter Davies, the publisher - the original Peter Pan - virtually shut Manning away while he wrote the book, taking away each day's writing before Manning could correct it. Manning was notorious for re-writing over and over again, so that hardly anything got finished. The result was a book straight from the heart, with no attempt to re-write it and turn it into "art." Tom Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dolphin Posted 8 December , 2004 Share Posted 8 December , 2004 The AWM's outline biography of Frederic Manning is here: http://www.awm.gov.au/people/1081228.asp Gareth Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spike10764 Posted 8 December , 2004 Share Posted 8 December , 2004 Although a novel, the "warts and all" version is just how I'd imagine ordinary citizen soldiers would have spoken and behaved in the war. Too many books were written from the point of view of the upper classes-they have their merits-but earthiness- a quality of the common man is often missing. Edwin Campion Vaughan captures some of the earthiness in Some Desperate Glory, but his peers seemed to regard him as a bit of an "odd fellow". Irreverent, bawdy, grumbling and loyal to their mates- that's how I hope my Great Grandfather and his fellow Lonsdales were. True sons of Cumberland. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Hederer Posted 17 December , 2004 Share Posted 17 December , 2004 "Middle parts of fortune," is a fantastic book. It's the only war novel I've read which captures the real "feel" of the military. My favorite book from the Allied side. Paul Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianw Posted 18 December , 2004 Share Posted 18 December , 2004 It's a must read. Simple as that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Rory Posted 29 December , 2004 Share Posted 29 December , 2004 Really good book, one of the best reads to date for me. Rory Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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