Caroline Playne

Caroline Elizabeth Playne (2 May 1857 – 27 January 1948) was an English pacifist, humanitarian, novelist, and historian of the First World War.

Early life Very little is known about the personal details of Playne's life, as she left little of her own documentary evidence. She was born in Avening, Gloucestershire, one of two daughters of Margarettia Sara, a Dutchwoman, and her English husband, George Frederick Playne, a cloth manufacturer. Caroline was multilingual from childhood, speaking English and Dutch, while her later historical work suggests she also was familiar with French and German.

Playne's first foray into writing was as a romantic novelist. In 1904 she published The Romance of a Lonely Woman closely followed by The Terror of the Macdurghotts in 1907, both novels published by T. Fisher Unwin under the name C.E. Playne. In 1908, Playne was elected an associate member of the University Women's Club. Over the following years she also became a member of the Hampstead Peace Society, the League of Peace and Freedom, and the Peace Society.

At the outbreak of the First World War, Playne immediately became a committee member of the Society of Friends' Emergency Committee for the Assistance of Germans, Austrians and Hungarians in Distress, an organisation set up to assist citizens of those countries in Britain, including prisoners of war. She became heavily involved in this work, helping with accommodation and other needs for the thousands of "enemy aliens" who appealed to the Committee for help, while also taking up detailed committee tasks and financial scrutiny.

Alongside this humanitarian work, Playne joined the Union of Democratic Control when it was formed in 1914, hosting events for the organisation at her London home. She was also involved in encouraging personal correspondence between the belligerent countries; the tracing of missing persons; and translating German newspaper articles for British audiences.

Historical writing During the war, Playne assembled a large mass of research on the conflict and events in London, including some 530 books and pamphlets. With the addition of her own voluminous diary observations, and encouraged by her friend, the writer Vernon Lee, this collection provided the material for her four major studies of the war and its causes: The Neuroses of the Nations (1925); The Pre-War Mind in Britain (1928); Society at War 1914–1916 (1931); Britain Holds On 1917–1918 (1933).

Both pioneering and idiosyncratic, Playne's historical work draws heavily on the emerging methodologies of social psychology to argue that the War represented a collective "neurosis" of the European mind. Preoccupied with "the mind and the passions of the multitude", Playne deployed a vast array of sources and quotations to critique European culture before and during the War, especially its nationalism, imperialism and militarism. She argues that the technological and social developments of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries "disorientated" and "disjointed" European societies, and was especially damaging to the "mental calibre" of the cultural elite. Her work is particularly notable for emphasising the influence of mass media in shaping and directing public opinion, anticipating media studies by fifty years.

Despite the originality of her approach to the study of the War, Playne has been neglected by later scholars. Where they are used, her books are largely drawn upon as sources for detail and reportage of the war years, rather than analyses in their own right.

Later life and death In 1938, Playne deposited her research collection in the library at Senate House, London. Playne never married, and left no children. She died at Hampstead in 1948.

Works Fiction: The Romance of a Lonely Woman, London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1904 The Terror of the Macdurghotts, London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1907

Non-Fiction: The Neuroses of the Nations, London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1925 The Pre-War Mind in Britain. An Historical Review, London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1928 Society at War 1914–1916, London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1931 Britain Holds On 1917, 1918, London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1933 Bertha von Suttner, and the Struggle to Avert the World War, London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1936

The four volumes on the Great War are also available in electronic edition, in a single ebook that collects them all: Society in the First World War, GogLiB ebooks, 2018