PARTRIDGE, Eric, ed.

£400 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

A Martial Medley: Fact and Fiction. First edition, first impression, 1,000 copies printed; presentation copy from one of the contributors, inscribed on the front free endpaper, "With love and affection Norman Hancock, May 23, 1931. And apologies for the Rabelaisia!" Hancock contributed the short story "War from the Ranks", described as "admirable" by John O'London's Weekly. That review continued, "Here, told with directness and entire simplicity, we have the experiences of a lance-corporal in the infantry; this is more genuinely illuminating than a vast deal of the stuff that has appeared, some of it with great success, in the guise of fiction" (newspaper clipping tipped-in, dated in pencil 27.6.31). Hancock remains elusive but he may be the author of Interlude for John (Dent, 1932) and An Innocent Grows Up (Dent, 1947). This is an interesting Great War anthology, comprising pieces by Conal O'Riordan, Charles Edmonds, C. W. Grundy (concerning the WAAC), John Brophy (two contributions), "Miles", Stephen Southwold, E. C. Pattison, Hancock, and two by Partridge, "Byways of Soldiers' Slang" and "From Two Angles", the latter written under his pseudonym of Corrie Denison. It is divided into three sections, "Conceivably True", "Concerning the True" and "Actually True".

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