Between 1911 and 1919, Gwyneth Murray and Harry Logan wrote each other thousands of letters, detailing their emotional states, their physical desires, and their hopes and fears about their relationship, which culminated in marriage and three children. Some two thousand of these letters have survived, and they form the basis of the engaging Bodies, Love and Faith in the First World War: Dardanella and Peter by historians Nancy Christie and Michael Gauvreau.

The book began as a question about how higher education for women affected “the gender dynamics of courtship and marriage in the first decades of the twentieth century” (3). Murray was the daughter of a prominent Oxford family and a brilliant student at Girton College, Cambridge, where she achieved a First in the Mathematics Tripos. Yet it is Logan who steals the show in these pages. Arriving in Oxford from Canada as a Rhodes Scholar, he was meant to follow in his father's footsteps and train as a clergyman. As Christie and Gauvreau document, he was preoccupied with achieving the mental, physical, and social mastery he associated with masculinity. But his words, which overflow onto the pages of this account, convey something very different: a moody, mercurial, sensual man whose desires constantly exceeded social norms.

Christie and Gauvreau proceed more or less chronologically, beginning in Edwardian Oxford and following their protagonists through a prolonged courtship, a wartime wedding, and a postwar family life (of sorts). Although their focus is on the world created by Logan and Murray in their letters, they situate their account within the broader debates on love, sex, and the self in this era. They are particularly interested in the changing meanings of friendship, marriage, and family life, and they are attentive to how Murray and Logan are at once very modern and deeply influenced by traditional ties and expectations. They identify a “turn towards interiority,” arguing that Logan and Murray were “typical modern Edwardians” in “privileging inner thoughts over external events, in placing love at the core of life, and in deifying personal relationships in which the romantic and sexual relations of man and woman were deemed the most important” (7).

These remarkable letters demonstrate the translation of major developments in psychanalytic theory, sexology, eugenics, and marital and parenting advice into the intimate space of a single relationship. Christie and Gauvreau portray two young people seeking to improve themselves and to achieve a modern marriage that satisfies them both. The sections on Logan's religious background and his grappling with theological questions is especially important; it captures the interrelationship of religion and sexual modernity in this era and contributes to the rewriting of the secularization narrative. I would have been interested to see more discussion of how Murray's mathematical and scientific training at Cambridge might have influenced her thinking, which often diverged from Logan's in ways that caused profound conflict.

Although the letters are very frank about sex, they rely on various codes and allusions, developing what Christie and Gauvreau aptly describe as a private language shared by the lovers. (In the title, “Dardanella and Peter” refer to nicknames they used to discuss their vagina and penis without attracting the notice of censors in their wartime letters, for example.) Christie and Gauvreau are clear about the methodological challenges and opportunities here. The rich layers of meaning offer considerable scope for further debate and discussion.

For example, Christie and Gauvreau approach this material as a case study in the development of heterosexual sex and romance. It is certainly a salutary reminder that sex between men and women can be as weird, variegated, and complex as anything we might label as queer. Both Murray and Logan struggle in various ways with the norms of their society, underscoring the point that heterosexuality is not the same as heteronormativity. However, I found Christie and Gauvreau's arguments that Logan's intense relationships with men were homosocial and homoerotic, but not homosexual, to be unconvincing. By the end of the book, Murray is returning alone to England with her children in 1925 while Logan lives for an extended time in Canada with Captain Mark Levey; after the two men parted, Levey wrote, “My association with you has left a very delicious and lasting taste in my mouth” (279). Given that sex was represented through diverse metaphors ranging from thumbs to geography in the letters between Murray and Logan, there does not seem to me to be any reason to be too shy in interpreting this remark as a reference to physical intimacy and probably to oral sex. Interpreting Logan as a man who had sex with both men and women could invite a queer history that situates them in the context of other early twentieth-century marriages whose members sought sex and intimacy beyond the couple.

Similarly, the themes of power, control, and kink offer a rich field for future investigation into these letters. Here, Christie and Gauvreau offer careful analysis of the shifting roles assumed by Logan and Murray, acknowledging both an adherence to wider norms of male dominance and an investment in playing with power in ways that might now be classified as kink or BDSM (bondage, discipline, and sadomasochism). On the other hand, some of the letters suggest that Logan could be controlling and even rather cruel. Because of the use of their private language of sex, it is not always easy to interpret what is part of a game and what is meant sincerely. Christie and Gauvreau are clear about the limited choices available to Murray, who came to regret her inability to continue working and earning money after becoming Logan's wife.

These comments only underscore the abundance of the sources that Gauvreau and Christie have brought to light here and have analyzed so usefully. Historians of gender, sexuality, and religion will find a great deal to interest them in this valuable volume.