This book, together with A Second Book of Broadsheets makes up an anthology of the 1915 broadsheets distributed by The Times to members of H.M. Forces serving in the trenches of World War I. The volume contains a wide variety of rich literature form before the war and was designed to give soldiers entertainment. It includes extracts from the works of Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling, William Shakespeare, William Wordsworth and  Charles Dickens.