Isaac Rosenberg: Early Poetry and Related Documents
from the Joseph Cohen Collection of
World War I Literature

Isaac Rosenberg, recognized as the first significant Jewish poet in English literature, was one of the major poets whose life was cut short by the Great War, and the only one who served in the ranks. He died on the Somme in 1918 at the age of 27. Before his death, he wrote some of literature’s most evocative accounts of the ravages of war. His poem “Break of Day in the Trenches” is among the best-known poems of the war.

Rosenberg’s first publications were produced in modest quantities by a small print shop in London and are among the great rarities in 20th-century English poetry. This online collection includes all of Rosenberg’s earliest works: one of only three known copies of his first book of poems, Night and Day (1912), with an additional manuscript poem added by Rosenberg in his own hand; Youth, a book of poems from 1915; and his play Moses (1916). Also included here are: a letter of Rosenberg’s written from the trenches; the only known surviving copy of his essay on art from The Jewish Standard (1915); a letter from a friend onto which Rosenberg has added a watercolor drawing; studies of nudes and of a barrister; and a self-portrait in pencil, all of which are part of the library's holdings. (more...)