The Old Century

Faber & Faber, 1938-01-01. First Edition. Hardcover. Near Fine/Very Good+. Hardcover with scarce DJ, First Edition 1938 Faber & Faber Limited London 293 pages. Near Fine in a VG+ DJ, Marbled buckram cloth boards with gilt titles and decoration to green panel on spine-corners sharp. Minor shelf/edge wear and a few very small chips to unclipped DJ with a bit of fading to spine-now in mylar. No notes or writing-All pages are clean and crisp. Siegfried Loraine Sassoon, CBE, MC (8 September 1886 – 1 September 1967) was an English poet, writer, and soldier who was part of the British upper class. Decorated for bravery on the Western Front, he became one of the leading poets of the First World War. His poetry both described the horrors of the trenches, and satirized the patriotic pretensions of those who, in Sassoon's view, were responsible for a jingoism-fueled war. Sassoon's bravery was inspiring to the extent that soldiers of his company said that they felt confident only when they were accompanied by him. Deepening depression at the horror and misery the soldiers were forced to endure produced in Sassoon a paradoxically manic courage, and he was nicknamed "Mad Jack" by his men for his near-suicidal exploits. Despite his decoration and reputation, he decided in 1917 to make a stand against the conduct of the war--The Old Century tells the story of the first twenty-one years of his life--in an England which still remembered and was the better for remembering. LOC SSS-05