THE CHILDREN OF THE SOULS: A TRAGEDY OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR. by MacKenzie, Jeanne - 1986

London: Chatto & Windus, 1986. 276 pp, large 8vo (9 7/16" H). B&w photographs, maps, family trees. " 'It seems that our generation at Balliol is doomed', Patrick Shaw Stewart wrote to Lady Desborough from Gallipoli. 'If I live through this war I shall be almost without friends'. He was in fact the last to die of the close-knit, brilliantly clever and engagingly vivacious group that included Raymond Asquith, Julian and Billy Grenfell, Edward Horner, Charles Lister, Ego and Yvo Charteris. Children of the Souls, the bright collection of late Victorian aristocrats, these young men were brought up together at Eton and Oxford; with such friends as Winston Churchill, Edward Marsh, Duff Cooper, John Buchan, Diana Cooper and Rupert Brooke, they were becoming part of the Edwardian elite, moving from one fashionable ball or country house party to the next, meeting politicians and poets and beginning careers in the City, in the law and public service. In this moving group portrait, which is based on many unpublished letters, both to and about each other, Jeanne MacKenzie tells of a happy youth and blighted manhood which epitomises the epic tragedy of the twentieth century. It is a story of ruinous romanticism whose implications stretch far beyond the brief lives of this 'lost generation'." Light to moderate browning to pages, one or two pages with tiny foxing marks, moderate browning to edges of textblock, very light wrinkling at top/bottom of spine, tiny tear and crease at top edg of page 109 - archivally taped, tiny dint on bottom edge of rear board, tiny gold offset on rear board. Dust jacket is price clipped, has light edge wrinkling - mainly at top of spine and flap-folds.. First Edition. Hard Cover. Very Good-/Very Good.