Eighteen Months in the War Zone (Signed copy)

Signed by Kate John Finzi, a Great War nurse and sister of composer Gerald Finzi

Author

Publisher

Printing Details

First edition. Hardback, bound in the original green cloth with (faded) gilt titling to spine, and blindstamped to upper board. 21 x14cm, xxiii +261pp, with sixteen plates (all plates are present but there is an error to the pagination in the plate index where a plate with two images is given separate page numbers, but all images are there and in the correct order).

This copy has been signed and dedicated by Kate John Finzi to the ffep. She signed the book in 1917, and there is also a pencil signature of the recipient.

Kate Finzi's record of her time as a nurse on the Western Front in the Great War. It runs from August 1914 through to February 1916, and is based on the diary she kept. It covers the chaotic first few months with 'private' or charitable hospitals (unliked by the censor as there was no controlling the flow of information out of them), through to her time running the military baths and tending to up to 100 injured men a day.

Kate John Finzi was born in London in 1890, and her younger brother was the composer Gerald Finzi. She lost two other brothers on active service during the war. She married an officer of the Northumberland Fusiliers in 1917, and died in 1958.

Condition

The book is in good readable condition but with some quite heavy wear. The green cloth has some lifting to the front board and is a little faded to the spine. Moderate rubbing to the corners. The inner binding is secure but weakening at the half-title page. The pages have comprehensive blotchy foxing throughout, particularly around the plates. However, this is a rare first edition, and especially so signed.

Further pictures available on request.