Poems of Love and War

American suffragette, socialite, poet, novelist, nurse—Mary Borden (1886-1968) is a complex historical figure, who is unfortunately often overlooked in the male-dominated survey of war heroes. In her twenties, during World War I, Borden self-funded, established, and ran a field hospital for French soldiers on the frontlines “as close to the fighting as possible.” Although married with three children, she fell in love and had a scandalous affair with a British officer she met at the front. She was close friends with William Churchill, Noel Coward, and Albert Einstein, and she eventually organized the presidential campaign of her nephew, Adlai Stevenson. Borden was, in every way, an exceptional human being, and she brilliantly captured her wartime experiences through her poetry.

The first full book of Borden’s poems ever to be published, Poems of Love and War finally offers the collected works of this remarkable woman nearly a century after they were written. It includes an introduction describing her extraordinary life, from growing up in Chicago to her war efforts to her cultural and political influence in later years. With many previously unpublished poems, Poems of Love and War collects Borden’s immediate, passionate reactions to everything she saw and experienced throughout two world wars.