Memoirs of an Infantry Officer – Siegfried Sassoon – First Reprint, 1930 – Dustwrapper

Author: Siegfried Sassoon
Title: Memoirs of an Infantry Officer
Publisher: Faber & Faber Ltd., London
Date: 1930
Edition: First Reprint, Published in the Same Month as the First Edition
Format: Octavo
Pagination: 334pp
Binding: Original Publisher’s Blue Cloth, Lettered in Gilt
Dustwrapper: Original Dustwrapper, Priced 7s. 6d. Net
Condition: Fine in Very Good Dustwrapper
Stock Number: 004218
Location: Bookroom

Description

An early copy of Siegfried Sassoon’s Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, first published by Faber & Faber in 1930, here in the first reprint issued in the same month, and retaining the original dustwrapper priced 7s. 6d. net.

The book is the second volume in Sassoon’s celebrated semi-autobiographical Sherston trilogy, following Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man and preceding Sherston’s Progress. Although presented through the fictional figure of George Sherston, the narrative draws very closely upon Sassoon’s own experiences as an infantry officer on the Western Front during the First World War.

Siegfried Sassoon

Siegfried Loraine Sassoon (1886–1967) was one of the defining literary figures of the First World War.

Educated at Marlborough and Clare College, Cambridge, Sassoon served as an officer in the Royal Welch Fusiliers and acquired a reputation for exceptional courage in action. He was awarded the Military Cross for bringing wounded men back under fire and became known among fellow soldiers for his willingness to undertake dangerous patrols and raids. His wartime experience, however, increasingly brought him into conflict with the continuation of the war. In 1917 Sassoon issued his famous “Soldier’s Declaration”, publicly protesting against what he believed had become the deliberate prolongation of the conflict. Rather than court-martial him, the authorities sent him to Craiglockhart War Hospital near Edinburgh, where he met Wilfred Owen. His poetry and prose subsequently became central to the literary memory of the First World War.

The Sherston Trilogy

Memoirs of an Infantry Officer forms the second part of Sassoon’s fictionalised autobiographical sequence usually known as the Sherston trilogy:

Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man – 1928
Memoirs of an Infantry Officer – 1930
Sherston’s Progress – 1936

The first volume follows George Sherston’s pre-war rural life and his gradual movement toward military service.

The present volume takes the story into the war itself, principally covering the period from the spring of 1916 to the summer of 1917. Faber describes the work as Sassoon’s fictionalised autobiography of precisely this period, following Sherston from the trenches through the Fourth Army School, Morlancourt, the Somme and ultimately toward his rejection of the war. Although Sherston is nominally fictional, the sequence is rooted firmly in Sassoon’s own experiences, and the division between memoir and fiction is deliberately porous.

Condition

First Reprint, 1930. Octavo. 334pp. Original publisher’s blue cloth, lettered in gilt to the spine. Original dustwrapper priced 7s. 6d. net. The binding is nice and tight and very clean. The original blue cloth is exceptionally well preserved and the gilt spine lettering remains bright. The pages are very nice and clean throughout. The book itself is in fine condition. The original dustwrapper is nicked, marked and chipped, with general age-toning and rubbing. There is wear and small loss around the spine ends and upper extremities, but the wrapper remains substantially complete and presents well. The original price of 7s. 6d. net remains present. The dustwrapper is in very good condition overall.

Stock Number: 004218 Location: Bookroom

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