Forrest, Bob
A Rubaiyat of the Trenches: Who was "de C"? Bob Forrest. Manchester : [Bob Forrest], 2019. 29 pages, 8 pages of plates : illustrations (some in colour) ; 30 cm.
A Rubaiyat of the Trenches was a biting anti–War parody of FitzGerald published in London in 1917. Its author was named only as “de C”, and two candidates have been proposed for his identity – William Edward Clery (or de Clery as he sometimes styled himself) and Alec de Candole – both names neatly abbreviating to “de C”, of course. This essay investigates the merits of both, and along the way looks at the religious doubts which arose as a result of the horrors of the Great War, one manifestation of which was A Rubaiyat of the Trenches.
Online available in the Notes and Queries Index