MEMOIRS OF A FOX-HUNTING MAN. By Siegfried Sassoon. With decorations by William Nicholson.

(1928) 1999 paperback reprint. 12mo paperback (110 x 177mm). Pp313. B/w vignette illustrations by William Nicholson.

This is a pocket paperback edition of Sassoon's famous semi-autobiographical novel which quickly ran to many impressions. The main character's time in France in the First World War occupies the last two chapters. The rest of the book is a fascinating account of a childhood and youth of mildly faded gentility in a countryside lacking motorcars and mains electricity. "Not only a prose masterpiece, but also a picture of the England which was shattered by the War." (Edmund Blunden). "It is one of the most subtle and moving narratives of youth's education in life, of the gradual breakdown of an egocentric universe that is happy, innocent and hopeless." (Angus Wilson).