BROPHY, John.

£175 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

The World Went Mad. A Novel. First edition, first printing, published simultaneously by Cape in London. This surprisingly scarce novel, a family saga set against the backdrop of the First World War, is particularly uncommon in the superb Boris Artzybasheff dust jacket, which presents in its snaking mural a kaleidoscope of big business, the military, nymphs, coquettes, soldiers and Christian iconography. John Brophy (1899-1965), who served on the Western Front, remains perhaps best known for his first book, The Bitter End (1928), "a war novel which featured an attractive semi-autobiographical hero, Donald Foster, who gave voice to the sense of loss and disappointment in England a decade after 'the war to end war'". It launched his career and "marked Brophy as an author to watch, particularly in its development of the mixture of nostalgia and anger that was to give a popular appeal to his disillusioned descriptions of the horrors of war" (ODNB). In 1930, he edited, with Eric Partridge, Songs and Slang of the British Soldier, 1914-1918, revised and published in 1965 as The Long Trail. During the 30s he was prolific, publishing at least one novel a year. The World Went Mad received plaudits from Compton Mackenzie, James Agate, and Winifred Holtby, who, along with Vera Brittain, is the book's dedicatee.

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