Marrin's Bookshop

Synopsis

(a chronicle of ancient sunlight).

Item Description

FIRST EDITION. 8vo. 8 x 5.5 inches. 461 pp. + [3] pp. series list. Bound in original red cloth, gilt, in pictorial unclipped dust wrapper (with Nevinson etching presented to Williamson in 1918 on rear wrapper) which has some edge wear, including head and tail of spine, which is sunned, also. top edges. Edges foxed and occasionally in margins, otherwise a very good copy. Decorated by owl device at end of text. The eighth novel in Williamson's fifteen novel sequence, A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight. It is the last one recording the war service of his hero, Phillip Maddison He is temporarily blinded by mustard gas in the fighting following the German Spring Offensive of 1918 and hospitalised back in England. After the Armistice he is transferred to a Dispersal Unit at Shorncliffe Camp, Folkestone and then, in 1919 to a Rest Camp, just behind the Leas. It is in Folkestone that he first encounters the work of Richard Jefferies, buying The Story of My Heart at a secondhand shop. The final line of the book is 'No man can be destroyed once he had discovered poetry, the spirit of light.' (Matthews, Henry Williamson A Bibliography A48). Sold with free copy of Recreating a Lost World Henry Williamson and Folkestone 1919-20 (Henry Williamson Society, [2008]). 28 pp.