LET BATTLE COMMENCE by Wendy Klein
​Published 1st April 2020
Paperback, 15 x 21 cm
37 pages
RRP £8.00

LET BATTLE COMMENCE by Wendy Klein

Wendy Klein comments on her pamphlet, which is based on letters from her great-grandfather to his wife during the American Civil War:
'Writing my great-grandfather:
'Just over five years ago, my cousin, the artist Ippy Patterson, sent me 175 pages of letters written by my great-grandfather, Robert Melvin Tarleton Jr, to his mother and to his fiancée, later his wife, Sallie Lightfoot while he was serving as a Confederate soldier. Although I’ve never been much interested in genealogy, I was intrigued with this slave-owning gentleman who had the same name as my paternal grandfather and my own father. As I browsed through the many pages of typewritten text, painstakingly copied from the handwritten originals, I brooded over whether there might be some poems from them. Little did I know how difficult it would be to extract them, to do justice to the many passionate, articulate letters written by my ancestor over that time period, whose beliefs could not have been more different from my own.'

​‘Wendy Klein's very personal response to the American Civil War offers us a multitude of viewpoints; honest, brutal even, but always laced with an understanding of the frailty of mankind when in combat. A brilliant piece of work.’
       Jonathan Davidson

‘Family history is a subject well used by poets, but Klein succeeds in “making it new.” ‘
       Emily Wills. Artemis Journal

Wendy Klein studied Drama and English at the University of Utah and San Francisco State University . She left the USA and came to live in England in 1971. Since beginning to write seriously in 1998, she has had many of her poems published and has won numerous competitions.