Books

Charles Wadsworth Camp (1879-1936) was a journalist, critic, playwright, novelist, and soldier. Born in Philadelphia and educated at Princeton University, his work appeared in publications like Collier’s and The New York Sun. He met the pianist Madeleine Barnett Camp at a wedding in Jacksonville, Florida, and they were married. Together they traveled extensively for his writing assignments until the outbreak of World War I. Charles covered both the Easter Rising in Ireland, and the front in 1916. War’s Dark Frame is a collection of his journalism from that assignment, and it follows his journey by ship from New York to England to France. Based in Paris, he traveled to the various places on the front and reported on the devastation, the technologies, spycraft, and war’s democratic effects. He had no enthusiasm for war, but saw that the United States would soon have to join the effort.

When the United States entered the war, he volunteered, and was asked by his colonel to write a history of his battalion. The result was History of the 305th Field Artillery, and it is a record of the building of the National Army and its service. His characteristic wry humor and dialogue is present, even in the face of danger and death. His daughter, Madeleine, was born just after the armistice in November 1918, but he didn’t return home until May 1919. He was exposed to toxic gas during deployment and suffered from recurring pneumonia as a result. He died at 57 after catching a cold at a Princeton football game. Daughter Madeleine grew up to become an author of more than 60 books, including the classic A Wrinkle in Time, a story in which a daughter embarks on an interstellar journey to find her lost father.

This edition brings together his two books on World War I and includes an introduction by Jonathan D. Bratten, author of To the Last Man: A National Guard Regiment in the Great War, 1917-1919, and an afterword by Charlotte Jones Voiklis, great-granddaughter of Charles Wadsworth Camp and executor of her grandmother Madeleine L’Engle’s estate.