Limited edition of 350 numbered and signed copies (this is no.39), quarter vellum with cloth boards, top edge gilt, fore and bottom edges uncut, Geoffrey Bles, 1930.

Book condition: The vellum spine has darkened unevenly, but the cloth boards are unfaded and unmarked. Some very light foxing to the endpapers, but generally a very good copy. (The cataloguer was surprised to see his name neatly inscribed in pencil on the endpaper followed by the date 1968. He has no recollection of this previous ownership!)

The Patriot's Progress was immediately recognised for the power of its writing and the striking lino-cuts by William Kermode, and has stood the test of time. It has been reprinted many times over the years and is recognised as a classic of First World War literature. Arnold Bennett, novelist and foremost critic of the day, reviewed the book for the Evening Standard:

Its power lies in the descriptions, which have not been surpassed in any other war book within my knowledge. I began by marking pages of terrific description. But I had to mark so many that I ceased to mark. I said: 'Nothing could beat that, or that, or that.' I was wrong. Henry Williamson was keeping resources in reserve for the supreme attack in which his hero lost a leg. This description (p. 169), quite brief, is a marvel of inspired virtuosity. And it is as marvellous psychologically as physically. . . . No overt satire, sarcasm, sardonic irony in the book. Yet it amounts to a tremendous, an overwhelming, an unanswerable indictment of the institution of war – 'the lordliest life on earth'.

A word as to Mr. Kermode's pictures. . . . They are very good, and just as much a part of the book as the text itself. It would be as fair to say that the text illustrates the pictures as that the pictures illustrate the text. The two forms of expression are here, for once, evenly complementary.

Daniel Farson, in his Henry: An Appreciation (1982), wrote:

Australian painter William Kermode asked Henry to write the captions for his lino-cuts of the war. Characteristically. Henry reversed the roles, producing a complete book with the lino-cuts serving as illustrations. . . . This is one of Henry's most unusual books, with a hard edge to his writing, justifying Arnold Bennett's claim that 'of its kind [it] has never been surpassed'. Henry claimed that he described the war with greater objectivity in the 'Chronicle', but it is precisely the lack of objectivity which makes The Patriot's Progress so powerful you feel scorched by its anger.