The Legion Book. Edited by Captain H. Cotton Minchin. Royal 4to, 32cm, pp.xiv, 242 + inserted plates & colophon, London: Privately printed at the Curwen Press (for the British Legion), 1929.
Number 492 of 500 (600) edition de luxe copies signed by the editor. Typeset in Monotype Lutetia and printed in red and black on mould-made paper. Illustrations within the text by William Nicholson, Eric Ravilious, Clare Leighton, Eric Fitch Daglish, Edward Bawden, and others, collotype plates (following the text), by William Rothenstein, Max Beerbohm, Augustus John, and others. Full orange buckram, spine titled in gilt, gold top, other edges uncut. Corners faintly bumped. A very good to fine copy.
Published to benefit the British Legion, this was a great success for the Curwen Press - the unlimited 'popular' edition being reprinted three times in 1929. Oliver Simon helped Minchin to edit it and was responsible for the elegant Lutetia type. Literary contributors included John Galsworthy, Arnold Bennett, P.G. Wodehouse, Winston Churchill, Vita Sackville-West and walter de la Mare. One hundred copies were bound up in full vellumized pigskin and held in the gift of H.R.H. The Prince of Wales.
