Literary Treason: Authors on Trial in the Wake of the Second World War

Can you commit treason by “mere words”? “Do civilized peoples shoot their poets?” Are there limits to free expression? Grappling with these questions, this open access book tells the fascinating story of how prominent authors and intellectuals found themselves singled out by national courts in the wake of the Second World War, for the crime of expressing opinions, both in print or over the radio.

Rigorously researched and engagingly written, it examines cases of authors such as Ezra Pound, P.G. Wodehouse and Robert Brasillach, who were suspected or tried for treason in the wake of the Second World War. Bringing to light never-before-seen trial transcripts alongside a wealth of rich archival material, it considers how writing and speech was considered treasonous by bureaucracies and courts in the UK, US, France, Ireland, Norway and Romania. It also touches on issues such as the political responsibility of authors, the position of national and international author’s organizations, and emerging literary theories, including how the New Critics came to defend Pound’s poetry in the late 1940s.

Six engrossing chapters provide a forensic examination of how “mere words” were cast as treason and explore what writing was deemed “acceptable” in the postwar period.

The eBook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (SAB23-0029) / University of Gothenburg.

• Publication date: 20 August 2026
• Page count: 304
• Dimensions: Height 233 mm; Width 158 mm; Thickness 21 mm
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
• Format: Paperback
• ISBN-13: 9781350406919