How Young They Died – Stuart Cloete – First UK Edition, 1969 – First World War Novel

Author: Stuart Cloete
Title: How Young They Died
Publisher: Collins, London
Date: 1969
Edition: First UK Edition
Format: Octavo
Pagination: 383pp
Binding: Original Publisher’s Green Cloth, Lettered in Gilt
Dustwrapper: Original Pictorial Dustwrapper, Priced 30s. Net
Condition: Fine in Near Fine Dustwrapper
Stock Number: 004219
Location: Bookroom

Description

A particularly attractive first UK edition of Stuart Cloete’s How Young They Died, published by Collins in 1969, a substantial novel of the First World War written by an author whose treatment of the conflict was informed by his own service as a very young officer on the Western Front.

Cloete follows a generation of young men whose transition from adolescence to adulthood is compressed brutally by war. The novel centres upon the experience of the junior officer: training, friendship, leave, love, fear and the relentless attrition of trench warfare, set against the major fighting on the Western Front. Its title encapsulates one of the book’s principal themes — the extraordinary youth of many of the officers and soldiers who were required to assume responsibility for men and confront industrialised warfare while barely out of school themselves. The book is particularly significant within Cloete’s work because he was not approaching the First World War solely as a historical novelist. He had himself served as a teenage officer during the conflict and survived experiences that killed many of his contemporaries. The resulting novel combines a broad historical canvas with an unusually personal understanding of the world it recreates.

Stuart Cloete

Edward Fairly Stuart Graham Cloete (1897–1976) was a South African novelist, short-story writer and memoirist whose fiction frequently drew upon major episodes of imperial, African and military history.

Born in France to a South African father and Scottish mother, Cloete was still a teenager when the First World War began. He entered the British Army at an exceptionally young age and served on the Western Front, initially with the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry and subsequently with the Coldstream Guards. His wartime experience was severe. Cloete was wounded and suffered the psychological consequences of prolonged combat, while many of the young officers with whom he began the war did not survive. Those experiences remained an important part of his imaginative life.

After the war he spent many years in South Africa before establishing a successful literary career. His books ranged widely across South African history, colonial society and war, and included The Turning Wheels, Rags of Glory and numerous collections of stories.

Periods of apparent normality are interrupted by violence, while survivors become increasingly experienced without necessarily becoming less vulnerable.

War, Love and Civilian Life

Condition

First UK Edition, 1969. Octavo. 383pp. Original publisher’s green cloth, lettered in gilt. Original pictorial dustwrapper, priced 30s. net. The binding is nice and tight and very clean. The pages are very nice and clean throughout. The book is in fine condition. The original dustwrapper is only very slightly nicked and rubbed, remaining bright, clean and particularly attractive. The original 30s. net price is retained.The dustwrapper is in near fine condition.

Stock Number: 004219 Location: Bookroom

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