Hardback, The Right Book Club, 1947.
Book condition: the dust wrapper has been reinforced internally with brown paper tape and the dust wrapper spine has darkened, but otherwise a very good copy of this unusual edition.

This, together with its companion volume Tales of a Devon Village, is recast from Henry Williamson's earlier books The Village Book (1930) and The Labouring Life(1932). The publisher's blurb for Life . . . merely states: 'A collection of short stories written, as were Tales of a Devon Village, when Mr. Williamson was living in North Devon after the last war, and now re-issued.'

The blurb for Tales . . .is a little more forthcoming: 'When Mr. Henry Williamson went to live in a thatched cottage in a North Devon village after the last war, he entered into the life about him with great zest; and several books of the period were published, but reached only a limited public. Now he has regrouped the books; and the first to reappear contains the stories, most of them written with a light, amusing touch, in Tales of a Devon Village, which covers the ten years of his life in the village. Mr. Williamson is well known for his animal and country books; but here, we think, another aspect of him is revealed, and one that should bring him the wide public that his varied talents deserve.'

(For a further consideration of the book and its background, see Anne Williamson's consideration Tales of, and Life in, a Devon Village.)