SASSOON, Siegfried.

£500 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Memoirs of an Infantry Officer. First edition, limited issue, number 5 of 750 copies signed by the author and printed on handmade paper. Sassoon's semi-autobiographical novel depicts trench warfare from the spring of 1916 to the summer of 1917; it was recognized almost immediately as a classic of First World War fiction."Like Tolstoy's War and Peace, which he was also reading while he wrote his own book, it is the combination of factual detail and direct personal experience vividly rendered that makes Infantry Officer a convincing and compelling picture of war. As he told Ottoline [Morrell], he wanted to give 'a really truthful inner-narrative'. He believed that this had not yet been achieved by an English writer, apart from Blunden" (Wilson, p. 238).Provenance: the collection of Steve Forbes, chairman of Forbes Magazine, and presidential candidate in the 1996 and 2000 US elections.

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