SOWDEN, WJ W JBiblio.com
The Roving Editors
1919132968Adelaide: W.K. Thomas & Co 1919. First Edition. Hardcover. Very Good/Dust Jacket Included. Adelaide W.K. Thomas & Co. 1919. Octavo iv iv 239 pages plus 28 full-page plates. Gilt-lettered pebble-grain cloth lightly flecked; top edge foxed; endpapers offset; contemporary ownership details; an excellent copy with the pictorial dustwrapper torn with some loss. The author Sir William Sowden editor of the Adelaide 'Register' was South Australian representative on the delegation of Australian editors invited by the British Government to witness the war operations on land and sea during the latter half of 1918. He was one of about a dozen Australian journalists invited to tour the battlefields of Europe at the behest of Lord Beaverbrook and his new Ministry of Information. Sowden was perhaps best known for his satirical column of the 1880s 'Echoes from the Smoking Room' and his cheerful bonhomie and enthusiasms are ever-present here. The account is particularly interesting because of the delegation's opportunity to tour the battlefields in the immediate wake of the Armistice and his initial horror at the sight is palpable the more so as he quickly becomes inured to the monotony of the destroyed landscape. W.K. Thomas & Co hardcover
