A Wife in London was written in 1899, around the start of which war?

• A. World War I
• B. Crimean War
• C. Second Boer War
• D. Napoleonic Wars

Answer: (C)

This question tests knowing when the wars around the turn of the century began and how a poem can reflect contemporary events. A Wife in London, written in 1899, sits at the start of the Second Boer War, which began in 1899 between Britain and the Boer Republics in South Africa. The poem’s core image—a wife in London receiving news through a telegraph about her husband’s fate in a distant war—embodies the personal cost of that imperial conflict and the sense of distance between home and the front. The other wars listed happened much earlier or later: Napoleonic Wars in the early 1800s, Crimean War in the 1850s, and World War I starting in 1914. So the Second Boer War is the best fit.