The Love of an Unknown Soldier.

John Lane, The Bodley Head, London., 1918. First edition. Octavo. pp x, 196. Frontispiece facsimile of a page of the manuscript. Anonymously published. Four-page introductory Explanation by John Lane in which he recounts how a ''red box'' of love letters was found in the abandoned dug-out of a gun position. In the last letter the writer is wounded and knows his death is inevitable; it ends in mid-sentence. Only recently, however, it has been discovered that the book is a fiction and the author, who actually did serve at the front, didn't die until 1959. The book was hugely popular at the time, going through several editions, and it would appear it was published for propagandistic rather than monetary reasons. A bit of spotting to endpapers. Very good indeed in very good, rubbed, chipped and nicked pictorial dustwrapper using an image probably by Raemaekers.