Memoirs of an Infantry Officer: Paul Hogarth Illustrates Siegfried Sassoon

Small display at the V&A of illustrations by Paul Hogarth from 1981 for a Limited Editions Club edition of Siegfried Sassoon’s World War I Memoir.

The illustrations related to specific passages of the book and drew on contemporary art of the time. One picture called “The Raid” had a Nevinson like feel to it with a big angular explosion at the top. Many of the pictures has long foregrounds which I liked. Others were small black and white sketches such as one of a rat and tin cans.

My favourite was one of a hospital ship, a portrait shaped picture with ¾ of the space being taken up by sea with the ship with red crosses on pushed to the top of the picture. It reminded me of the book I have just read about World War I nurses in a ship Wreck, Thomas Keneally’s “Daughters of Mars”.

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