COLUMBIA - A new exhibition at the University of South Carolina's Thomas Cooper Library provides a literary response to World War I.

"Voices of the Great War," on display in the library's mezzanine level through Sept. 30, complements a series of exhibitions on display at the university and in Columbia that commemorate World War I. The exhibit, which is free and open to the public, is mounted for the 90th anniversary of the U.S. declaration of war in 1917 on Germany and the Central Powers. It draws heavily from the library's special collections and features recent acquisitions not previously displayed.

Highlights from the exhibit are from Thomas Cooper Library's "Joseph M. Bruccoli Great War Collection," the "Joseph Cohen Collection of World War I Literature," the "Samuel Bloom World War I Archive" and the Allen of Hurtwood papers and individual items from various collections.

The university's World War I holdings are extensive, so that only a small portion of relevant materials can be featured in any single exhibition. Previous exhibitions have focused on highlights from a single collection.

Features of the "Voices of the Great War" exhibit include: Ancestral Voices - the literary heritage of the war; Eager Voices - Rupert Brooke, Charles Hamilton Sorley and others; Subaltern Voices - Siegfreid Sassoon, Wilfred Owen and Robert Graves; Echoing Voices - McCrae's "In Flanders Fields" and Alan Seeger's "Rendezvous"; Voices from the Ranks - Henri Barbusse, Frederic Manning and others; Isaac Rosenberg - from the "Joseph Cohen Collection;" Voices of Dissent - Clifford Allen, Bertrand Russell and others; Some Women's Voices - Vera Brittain, Helen Zenna Smith and Rebecca West; "The Samuel Bloom World War I Archive"; Lawrence of Arabia; and Some Post-War Voices - Erich Maria Remarque, Ernest Hemingway and others.

For more information on hours of operation of Thomas Cooper Library, contact 803-777-3142 or visit the web site www.sc.edu/library.

For more information about the exhibition, call 803-777-8154 or email at tclrarebooks@gwm.sc.edu.

The University of South Carolina is part of the "Forward Together: South Carolina in World War I" project, which features exhibitions that highlight the Palmetto State's role in the Great War. The project is a collaboration with the university's South Caroliniana Library and McKissick Museum, the S.C. State Museum, the S.C. Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum, the Historic Columbia Foundation and SC-ETV.