Fighting France

Published: 1915

Fighting France: From Dunkerque to Belfort is a collection of magazine articles by the American writer Edith Wharton on her time in France during the First World War, including her visits to the French sectors of the Western Front. The individual articles originally appeared in Scribner's Magazine in 1915. Part of the The War on All Fronts series, the book was published in 1918.

As nuanced in her observations of human behavior as she is in her vivid depictions of French landscape and architecture, Wharton fully exploited her unique position as consort to Walter Barry, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Paris, which allowed her unparalleled access to life in the trenches. Sensitive without sentimentality, and offering a valuable and extremely rare female perspective of a war dominated by the male viewpoint, this series of articles is nothing less than an inspirational testament to the strength of the human spirit at a time of the greatest adversity.