The Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 was a catastrophic global health crisis caused by the H1N1 influenza virus, infecting approximately one-third of the world's population and resulting in at least 50 million deaths. Occurring in the aftermath of World War I, the pandemic overwhelmed healthcare systems and highlighted the vulnerabilities of public health infrastructure. The widespread impact of the Spanish Flu led to significant changes in health policies and practices in the years that followed.

The silence surrounding the flu in literature (compared to WWI) has become a subject of critical study; however, it deeply affected Modernist writers like Woolf and Eliot, contributing to themes of fragmentation, anonymity, and the failure of language in the face of mass trauma.