The Sherston Trilogy: Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man / Memoirs of an Infantry Officer / Sherston's Progress by Siegfried Sassoon - 1971

London: Faber & Faber, Limited [Faber & Gwyer Limited] 1928, 1930, 1936. 8vo. First Editions of each volume; 395, 334, 280 pp. Blue cloth with gilt lettering on spines, under tan, yellow and blue jackets, not price clipped. A fictionalised autobiography of Siegfried Sassoon, who depicts his life through the upper-middle class George Sherston as he grows up and loses his innocence in the First World War. All three volumes are in very good condition, with only very slight discolouration to edges of boards and minimal wear to jacket edges; internally clean and bright with slight yellowing to endpapers in volume 2 ('Infantry Officer'). Volume 3 ('Sherston's Progress') has ink owner's name on ffep., dated September 1936. An amazing set of independent first editions brought together. . Very Good. Cloth. First Editions. 1928.

London: Faber & Gwyer; Faber & Faber,, 1928-36. A way of life which had gone forever First editions, first impressions, retaining the dust jackets. This lightly fictionalized trilogy details the author's lonely youth, his idle years as a country gentleman, and his military service on the Western Front. The first instalment was readily considered a "classic of its kind - an elegy for a way of life which had gone for ever" (ODNB) and was awarded the Hawthornden and James Tait Black Memorial prizes. "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). Sassoon considered the final instalment, Sherston's Progress, his best.… Read More