War and the Weird

Phillips, Forbes, 1866-1917Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

2.8

Word count: 213K words
Chapters: 22

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.War and the Weird by R. Thurston Hopkins and Forbes PhillipsAuthor: Phillips, Forbes, 1866-1917,Language: English, Class: D501: History: General and Eastern Hemisphere: World War I (1914-1918), Release Date: Apr 10, 2008

Editor's review

Co-authored by Forbes Phillips and R. Thurston Hopkins, this book is classified as historical literature related to the First World War, its title pointing to two threads: "war" and "the weird." It gathers the strange, eerie, and inexplicable sightings and rumors of the wartime setting, carrying both the feel of a historical archive and the appeal of the uncanny and the anecdotal. For readers familiar with the mainstream military history of WWI, it offers another marginal perspective: fear, imagination, and word-of-mouth in extreme circumstances. As a free Project Gutenberg e-book, it works well as supplementary material for research or casual reading. A caveat: much of the content consists of rumor and tall tales and should not be read as rigorous military history or factual verification. Read it in the spirit of "observing folk psychology in historical sources"—enjoy the storytelling while remaining cautious about veracity.

Who it's for

A good fit for

WWI history enthusiasts seeking anecdotal material beyond mainstream accounts
Readers of the uncanny and strange who prefer wartime-set tales
Researchers of folklore and rumor interested in wartime popular narrative
Free e-book readers looking for obscure older titles for leisure

Not a good fit for

Readers seeking rigorous WWI military history and battle data
Readers expecting full novelistic plots and character development
Readers uncomfortable with supernatural rumors and old-fashioned English

Reading tips

Dip into it as an anecdote collection rather than reading straight through.
Flag odd passages as you go; check afterward whether any historical record corresponds.
Read alongside a general WWI history to keep fact and rumor distinct.
Old-fashioned English is frequent; skip unfamiliar passages and return to them later.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Are the weird tales in this book real history?

The contents are largely a gathering of wartime rumors, anecdotes, and strange sightings with a clear word-of-mouth character, and cannot be taken directly as verified fact. The better approach is to treat it as folk narrative reflecting the fears and imagination of the time, not as rigorous military history.

Do I need prior knowledge of WWI?

Some background helps. Knowing the basic timeline and battlefield conditions of WWI makes it easier to understand the soil in which these rumors grew; but the book consists mostly of independent pieces, so even with limited background you can flip through it as a collection of strange tales, not necessarily in order.

Is it suitable for citation as research material?

Use it with caution, but do not cite it directly as factual evidence. If using it to study wartime folk psychology or the spread of rumor, treat it as a narrative text and cross-check it against other historical sources, clearly distinguishing rumor from verifiable record.

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About the author

Phillips, Forbes, 1866-1917 Author · 1866–1917

Forbes Phillips (1866–1917) was an English-language author active in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Public information about his life, nationality, and background is very limited; only his dates and a single surviving work can be confirmed. He is best known for War and the Weird, a title that suggests a blending of war themes with strange, supernatural, or mysterious elements. Works of this kind typically use wartime or military settings to build tension, then introduce uncanny events that resist explanation, highlighting fear and confusion in extreme circumstances. Because sources are scarce, Phillips's other writings, the development of his style, and his place in literary history remain difficult to describe; readers and researchers can glimpse his creative direction only through this one work.