Stapled booklet, brown card covers, Henry Williamson Society, 1983.
Book condition: good; owner's bookplate on free endpaper.

This was the first (of many) posthumous collection of HW's articles to be published by the Society, and contains the very earliest published writings of HW, which appeared in the Weekly Dispatch between July 1920 and January 1921, during his short-lived Fleet Street career. They include ‘The Country Week’ (short nature sketches) and ‘On the Road’ (a weekly column on light cars offering occasionally somewhat dubious advice!). HW’s fictionalised account of this period appears in The Innocent Moon (1961).

The edition is a straightforward facsimile reprint of a limited privately printed edition (of just seven numbered copies) published by John Gregory in 1969 with HW's permission. The budget was tight in the extreme: as Gregory notes in his Introduction, 'I asked several printers for quotations; all, alas, were far too expensive. Then I found a small local firm which printed notices and handbills; they assured me that the job would present no problem, and quoted a price of £45. In due course the proofs came back. Little thought had been given to the layout, the articles had been set out one after another and the pages seemed overcrowded. However, change was impossible, I was informed, unless almost every page was reset, at extra cost, and this was out of the question.' HW was sent one of the numbered copies, and he responded with typical kindness: 'Thank you so much for the brave little book. It is strange for me to re-enter the last (alas) past – the first thing that appeared in the W. Dispatch was on Parkin. The Editor said, Here's a star. The star fell some months later! . . . thank you for your steady friendship.'

(For a further consideration of the book and the background to the writing of it, see Anne Williamson's The Weekly Dispatch.)