GREENMANTLE

1916. London New York Toronto: Hodder and Stoughton, 1916. Original blue-green cloth.

First Edition of this wartime mystery, the second of Buchan's five featuring Richard Hannay (preceded by THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS, and succeeded by MR. STANDFAST, THE THREE HOSTAGES and ISLAND OF SHEEP). Richard Hannay is at once established in the very first chapter of GREENMANTLE as a man who has been through experiences on the Western Front that were common to thousands of Buchan's readers: his references to Loos, to 'that awful stretch between Cassel and Ypres', struck sympathetic responses... But here, in GREENMANTLE, was war as many fighting men felt somehow it ought to be: an affair of dash and personal heroism, of fast movement and great spaces (here indeed was the cavalry charge for which many a regular soldier was still hankering); of situations where a handful of men could alter the course of a battle. It was war without the mud, the lice, the boredom, the anonymity, the unimaginative strategy and mass casualties of frontal assault... [Smith] GREENMANTLE was bound in at least four shades of blue and green cloth, plus purple, apparently without priority; in our experience the green copies (the most common color) were usually bound without a front free endpaper, but this blue-green copy does have one. This is a near-fine copy (a hint of wear at the extremities, some cracking of the fragile endpapers) of this cheaply-produced wartime book. Blanchard A38.