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Many newspaper clippings of Jessie Pope's war poetry around WW1.

Jessie Pope (18 March 1868 – 14 December 1941) was an English poet, writer and journalist, who remains best known for her patriotic motivational poems published during World War I.[1] Wilfred Owen directed his 1917 poem Dulce et Decorum Est at Pope, whose literary reputation has faded into relative obscurity as those of war poets such as Owen and Siegfried Sassoon have grown.[2]

Pope's war poetry was originally published in The Daily Mail; it encouraged enlistment and handed a white feather to youths who would not join the colours. Nowadays, this poetry is considered to be jingoistic,[8][9] consisting of simple rhythms and rhyme schemes, with extensive use of rhetorical questions to persuade (and sometimes pressure) young men to join the war.

Other poems, such as The Call (1915)[10] – "Who’s for the trench – Are you, my laddie?" – expressed similar sentiments. Pope was widely published during the war, apart from newspaper publication producing three volumes: Jessie Pope's War Poems (1915), More War Poems (1915) and Simple Rhymes for Stirring Times (1916).[11]