Henry Williamson — The Phoenix Generation & the Dark Lantern

London, Macmillan and Co. 1965-1966. First edition. Cloth. Two smart volumes from English writer Henry William Williamson from the Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight series. Two volumes. From the A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight series, a sequence of fifteen novels following the life of Phillip Maddison from his birth in the late 1890s till the early 1950s. The books were based loosely on Williamson's own life and experiences. This set contains: The Dark Lantern, 1966. The first volume in the series. In this novel we meet Richard Maddison, a countryman working in London as a City clerk, struggling to make do on a few shillings a week. He falls for Hetty Turner, youngest daughter of a prosperous merchant, but her father rates Richard an unsuitable suitor. The Phoenix Generation, 1965. First edition. The twelfth volume in the series. In the troubled yet decadent years before the Second World War, Phillip Maddison sees the survivors of the Western Front as a phoenix generation impelled to reject the past in order to make a country 'fit for heroes&apos. Yet he prefers to plan his own history of the Great War and its aftermath, deeply involved in his own problems. Written by Henry William Williamson, an English writer who wrote novels concerned with wildlife, English social history, ruralism and the First World War. He was awarded the Hawthornden Prize for literature in 1928 for his book Tarka the Otter. In the original full cloth binding. Externally, smart with light wear to the extremities. Original unclipped dust wrappers are also smart with light wear and the odd small closed tear to the panel edges. Sunning to the spines with the odd small mark. Internally, firmly bound. Pages are very bright with the odd small spot. Very Good . Ill.: None. Very Good/Very Good.