The Harsh Voice (Guild Books No. S52) (Services Edition)

144pp, stapled. In thin card wrappers (covers are worn, marked, scuffed at edges, creased across rear top corner). A label has been adhered to the front cover indicating that ' The Surplus Government Stock of this edition has been purchased by W H Smith & Son Ltd., for sale at 1'-'. Internally rusting and spotting on the half title page, rusting around staples, occasional spotting throughout, pages a little tanned. Text block edge foxed. The British Publisher's Guild was a collaboration between a group of somewhat conservative publishers who banded together to publish paperbacks as means of competing Penguin Books, which came to dominate the lower-end of the market for books from its foundation in 1935. The Guild series was never particularly successful and ceased in the mid 1950s, after publishing some several hundred books. Included in that number were 231 'services editions', issued for troops serving in the second world war. This volume is from that series. The volume contains three of West's short novels - Life Sentence, The Salt of the Earth and The Abiding Vision.