Memoirs of an Infantry Officer

London: Faber & Faber, 1931.

First illustrated edition, published on year after the first. Original cloth with extensive decorations by Barnett Freedman, pictorial endpapers; frontispiece and an additional 15 coloured illustrations within the text by Barnett Freedman. 8vo pp 310, [2]; edges of the pages untrimmed; previous owner's pencilled inscription to the flyleaf. Ends of the spine slightly rolled and points of corners bumped. A near fine copy. 'Memoirs of an Infantry Officer' was one of Barnett Freedman's first commissions for Faber, and from this jumping off point he would become prolific, designing covers for editions of Charles Dickens, Charlotte Bronte and Leo Tolstoy. He was appointed as an Official War Artist at the outbreak of the Second World War and travelled with the British Expeditionary Force to France alongside Edward Ardizzone and Edward Bawden, whose influences can be seen in his designs. The second volume in the Sherston Trilogy is, like its predecessor, a largely fictionalised account of Sassoon's life during and immediately after the First World War. Sherston, the protagonist, is wounded when a piece of shrapnel passes through his lung after he foolishly pokes his head over the parapet at Arras in 1917. Sassoon later wrote that Sherston "is but one insignificant person caught up in events beyond anyone's comprehension".