Siegfried Sassoon | To Any Dead Officer..., Cambridge, 1917, first separate edition, signed presentation copy

Siegfried Sassoon

To Any Dead Officer (Who Left School for the Army in 1914). Cambridge: The Cambridge Magazine, 1917

FIRST SEPARATE EDITION, PRESENTATION COPY, ADDITIONALLY INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR, 8vo, single sheet folded, in quarter-morocco slipcase and chemise, one panel of chemise detached

An offprint of one of Sassoon's three verse contributions to C.K. Ogden's anti-militarist magazine: being Number 6 in the series of offprints (from August 1917). Presented "with the author's compliments" and additionally inscribed by Sassoon: "Hilda Gaige, from SS, 23 December 26" on the cover-title. Laid-in is an autograph letter from Sassoon to the recipient - the wife of Crosby Gaige, the American publishers of Sassoon's `The Heart's Journey': "I am sending you the poem you like in the leaflet form of its original appearance" and also requesting that she be "careful not to say anything" about a "sensitive" letter from Florence Hardy which Gaige had only seen "by accident". No inscribed copies of this title at auction since at least 1974.

PROVENANCE

Henry Lewis Batterman Jr., bookplate to front pastedown of chemise