£300
FIRST EDITION, WITH TWO SIGNED POSTCARDS FROM THE AUTHOR, 8vo, pp. ix, [i], 310, [2] + mounted frontispiece and 3 mounted plates. Original brown cloth, front board blocked in black and blue, spine lettered in gilt, top edge brown. Spine ends a little bumped. Bookplate of E. L. Allhusen to pastedown, two postcards from Belloc to Allhusen, one tipped in, the other loosely inserted.
The first edition of Belloc's mythopoetic exploration of the county of Sussex, with some correspondence between the author and the owner of this copy, art historian and collector E.L. Allhusen. Both postcards are responses to questions now lost, with the first dated 25th September [19]22 reading 'Part of it is in a book called "The Four Men" Nelson & Co., it was also used as a marching song by some of the Bechuanaland people in the war; Ridley's command I believe. It has a tune'. The second card, dated two months later, the 25th of November, reads 'No. I never wrote such a book. Not mine!'. Both are addressed to Allhusen at his Edinburgh address and signed H. Belloc.
