The Hydra - List of Issues

The Hydra is the magazine of the Craiglockhart War Hospital. It offers a unique record of life inside Craiglockhart in 1917–18, having been produced by the patients who were treated there.

The hospital doctors, in particular A.J Brock, thought it essential for shell-shock victims to be as active as possible, so the magazine was run by and for the patients, with the main purpose of advertising events and activities. Its pages tell of the lectures, meetings, expeditions, hobbies and entertainments that went on. Patients could contribute topical jokes about the hospital, as well as verse, stories, drawings and cartoons.

The Hydra, printed by a local company H. & J. Pillans & Wilson, was published fortnightly from 28 April to 29 September 1917. There was then a break until November, when the monthly New Series was launched under the editorship of JB Salmond, an experienced journalist and minor war poet.

Wilfred Owen was editor for six issues from 21 July 1917. He took the chance to publish (anonymously) the first two poems of his own ever to appear in print, Song of Songs and The Next War, as well as two new poems by Siegfried Sassoon, Dreamers and Wirers. Several more poems by Sassoon appeared in the New Series.

A complete set of the original series and six numbers of the New Series survive in the Owen Collection at the English Faculty Library, Oxford University. A full text transcription of the contents of The Hydra (excluding advertising material) has been produced by Edinburgh Napier University Library, in cooperation with the English Faculty at Oxford University. View these in our list of issues.

Cover of The Hydra, New Series, designed by Adrian Berrington, shows a patient in the grip of the Hydra, representing a shell-shock nightmare. But nurses are at hand, and in the distance the hospital stands secure under a summer sky. The title, a pun on 'Hydro', refers to the many-headed monster slain by Hercules.