Soliloquies of a Subaltern Somewhere in France

First edition, second impression.  52pp mass market paperback.  12mo.  Covers rubbed at edges, cracking around spine head, soiled and toned, with flat crease on verso.  Text block edges toned and a little rubbed.  Internally some faint and occasional spotting on first and last few pages.  Binding a little fragile.

Cooper, born in 1886 in Beckenham, Kent, served with the Royal Fusiliers during the First World War, writing much of his poetry as a war poet in the trenches.  He published two volumes of poetry, this and Tommies in the Line of Fire three years later in 1918.  English composer John Ireland set three of these poems from Soliloquies to music for voice and piano.  A harrowing collection of poems often providing authentic glimpses of a soldier's life, and death, in the trenches and contrasting sharply the horrors of warfare with the serene beauty of the countryside around hime.