Project Gutenberg 2025-07-27 Public domain in the USA. 518 Aldington, Richard 1892 1962 Oldington, Richard 29017387 Death of a hero : $b a novel $aNew York :$bCovici-Friede, Inc., $c1929. Wikipedia page about this book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_a_Hero Sean/IB@DP "Death of a Hero: A Novel" by Richard Aldington is a novel written in the early 20th century. It follows George Winterbourne—from his Victorian-bred upbringing through his service on the Western Front—to dissect the hypocrisies of family, love, and patriotism, and the psychic wreckage of war, as told by a sharp, disillusioned friend-narrator. Expect a mordant anti‑war portrait featuring George, his self-dramatizing mother, ineffectual father, wife Elizabeth, and mistress Fanny, with the narrative doubling as an indictment of a generation’s moral bankruptcy. The opening of the novel sets its method and mood: in a letter-preface the author declares he will ignore conventional form—a “jazz novel” and a threnody for a lost generation—followed by a note on censorship. The prologue recounts George’s death near the Armistice and, with savage irony, shows how little he is mourned: his father retreats into mawkish Catholic piety and is soon killed in an accident; his mother turns the news into theatrical self‑pity and erotic consolation with a “clean, straight” officer, quarrels over George’s effects, and remarries; his wife receives the telegram while returning home tipsy with a Swedish painter and coolly notifies Fanny; Fanny later moves on and marries. The narrator recalls his frontline friendship with George, charts his nerve collapse after long service, and suggests his death may have been a form of self‑destruction; a spare, military funeral leads to the narrator’s vow to “atone” by telling George’s life. Part One then rewinds to 1890s England, sketching George’s parents: George Augustus, a timid solicitor dominated by his pious mother, and Isabel Hartly, vigorous but vulgar and poor; their marriage, built on pretence and sexual ignorance, begins with a painful wedding night, grinding dependence, and humiliations in the in‑laws’ house. Isabel’s resentment hardens, yet she becomes fiercely devoted to her baby—George—whose birth closes this opening canvas of origins. (This is an automatically generated summary.) https://archive.org/details/deathofheronovel0000rich/page/n7/mode/2up 20250610130202aldington 1929 us Reading ease score: 72.7 (7th grade). Fairly easy to read. en World War, 1914-1918 -- Fiction War stories PR Text Category: Historical Novels Category: Novels Category: British Literature 810343 2025-09-30T08:16:36.764281 text/html 785970 2025-07-27T01:36:00 text/html 449557 2025-09-30T08:16:45.089350 application/epub+zip 456022 2025-09-30T08:16:37.968346 application/epub+zip 397678 2025-09-30T08:16:37.363313 application/epub+zip 654832 2025-09-30T08:16:50.743233 application/x-mobipocket-ebook 615963 2025-09-30T08:16:44.429251 application/x-mobipocket-ebook 772474 2025-09-30T08:16:35.336366 text/plain; charset=us-ascii 752765 2025-07-27T01:36:00 text/plain; charset=us-ascii 17106 2025-09-30T08:16:51.348260 application/rdf+xml 20238 2025-09-30T08:16:37.472321 image/jpeg 2920 2025-09-30T08:16:37.418348 image/jpeg 412911 2025-09-30T08:16:36.825425 application/octet-stream application/zip Archives containing the RDF files for *all* our books can be downloaded at https://book.klll.cc/wiki/Gutenberg:Feeds#The_Complete_Project_Gutenberg_Catalog en.wikipedia