Letter from England

First edition, first printing.  258pp.  Rose red cloth-covered boards with gilt lettering on the spine.  8vo.  Cloth a little worn, gently rubbed and rounded at tips of a mildly faded spine.  Some shadowing on text block edges.  Small bookshop ticket (from the Personal Bookshop, Boston) on the front free endpapers, together with three short pen marks, else internally neat, clean, bright and tight.

A collection of war-time articles by British journalist Mollie Panter-Downes.  Panter-Downes began writing for The New Yorker following the outbreak of the second world war, in a column titled Letter from London (and sometimes under the broader title, Letter from England) – early, vivid dispatches from London giving American readers a portrait of civilian life under the threat of German invasion, shortages and food rationing.  In doing so she helped transform the New Yorker from a humourous weekly into a widely respected venue for series literature and international reporting.  Her collected wartime columns were later expanded and republished under the title War Notes, 1939-1945, but this volume, now hard to find, remains the earliest and purest publication in book form of her war time reporting.