Whitechapel at War: Isaac Rosenberg and his Circle

Whitechapel at War: Isaac Rosenberg and his Circle is the first book for almost 20 years to focus on the visual work of poet-painter Isaac Rosenberg. It is also the first to explore his art in the context of his Whitechapel peers, including painters David Bomberg, Mark Gertler, Jacob Kramer, Bernard Meninsky and Clare Winsten, and the writers John Rodker, Joseph Leftwich and Stephen Winsten.

Now regarded as one of the finest war poets of his generation, Rosenberg published only two collections of poetry during his lifetime, all at his own expense. Although he thought of himself as a poet rather than a painter, his work as an artist deserves far greater consideration than it has been given to date. In his art as well as his poetry, Rosenberg sought to articulate the ongoing struggle between modernism and tradition, then at the heart of contemporary debate.

This book includes photographs of the artist and his contemporaries, reproductions of his drawings, letters and paintings, and written contributions from Rosenberg’s biographers and literary critics alongside more art-historical texts. It provides a fascinating document of a lost era.