We Happy Few: An Anthology

First edition, first impression.  One of a numbered edition limited to 750 copies, this being No. 10.  [iv, blank], 150, [vi, blank]pp, with engraved frontispiece and ten further engravings by John O’Connor.  Quarter bound in blue buckram over red, decorated paper-covered boards, gilt titles on spine.  Top edge gilt. 12mo.  Boards are rubbed all round edges, cloth rubbed at ends of a lightly sunned spine, slightly cocked.  Ungilded edges a little toned, with hint of toning on endpapers.  Internally a few minor signs of use and handling, and a bump to the lower edge of one of the preliminary blank pages.  

The first 100 copies in this edition are generally held to be specially bound by Sangorski & Sutcliffe.  By its numbering, this copy should be among those but in fact it is not, it is in the standard Golden Cockerel Press binding.

A slim, poignant anthology – including writers from Thackeray to Churchill –  compiled by the novelist and travel writer Owen Rutter, conceived to celebrate British history, stoicism and maritime prowess in the face of the devastating years of the Blitz and comprised of three sections, Britain at War, Britain at Sea and Britain in the Air.  Rutter died in 1944, before he had completed the project and its was published posthumously, after his wife Dorothy had completed the text and included her own, deeply personal, introduction.  An attractive volume thanks to the typography of Christopher Sandford and the eleven wood engravings by John O’Connor.