Description

8vo., Second Edition, with portrait frontispiece and 8 plates on 6, small personal name-stamp on front free endpaper; original green cloth, backstrip lettered in red, a near fine copy in unclipped dustwrapper. With striking dustwrapper artwork by James Holland. The collected edition of Monsarrat's well-known trilogy, first published in October 1945. The three constituent volumes - 'HM Corvette' (1942), 'East Coast Corvette' (1943) and 'Corvette Command' (1944) - are here reproduced in their entirety (but with fewer plates). Taken in sequence they provide a near-continuous record of Monsarrat's early wartime service; furthermore they contain much of the inspiration and context, and in several cases actual incidents, which reappear in his masterpiece 'The Cruel Sea'. This second edition includes a new Preface by the author giving an account of the works' genesis. ALL EARLY ISSUES ARE SCARCE WITH THE DUSTWRAPPER IN THIS CONDITION. Enser, p.120; Law 1010 (both recording the first edition).