Pirates a signed association copy by Claud Lovat Fraser first edition 1915

FRASER, Claud Lovat (1890-1921). Pirates. With a Foreword and Sundry Decorations by Lovat Fraser. Inscribed to Holbrook Jackson with an original Jolly Roger drawing. London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co. Ltd., [1915].

First edition. 180 x 220 mm. xvi, 159, [1] pp. Original cloth-backed pictorial boards, the front board illustrated in black, red and green, with printed paper spine label. Eight plates, including the frontispiece, printed in black on variously coloured papers, with further illustrations and decorations throughout the text. Some rubbing to corners and extremities, browning to boards and endpapers, and occasional spotting internally. Front inner hinge cracked, but holding firmly. Overall a very good copy, without dust wrapper.

Inscribed on the front free endpaper "For H.J. These.", above an original pen-and-ink drawing of a Jolly Roger flag, and signed "C. Lovat Fraser. March. 1916." Holbrook Jackson's pictorial bookplate on the front pastedown.

An association copy presented by Fraser to his friend and publishing partner, the writer and bibliophile Holbrook Jackson (1874-1948). Together with the poet Ralph Hodgson, they established At the Sign of the Flying Fame in 1913, producing illustrated poetry chapbooks and verse sheets. Fraser also illustrated Jackson's Town: An Essay (1913).

The presentation dates from shortly after Fraser's return from the Western Front. Serving with the 14th Battalion of the Durham Light Infantry, he had fought at the Battle of Loos in September 1915 and subsequently served in the Ypres Salient, where his battalion endured a German gas attack that December. By February 1916 he had returned to England suffering from shell shock and the effects of gas exposure. So, this presentation to Holbrook Jackson was made whilst he was convalescing.

The text reprints the greater part of the fifth edition (1735) of The History and Lives of all the most Notorious Pirates and their Crews, identified in Fraser's foreword as an unauthorised derivative of Captain Charles Johnson's A General History of the Pyrates (1724). Accounts of Blackbeard, Captain Kidd, John Rackham and other pirates are accompanied by Fraser's illustrations, with the plates on contrasting coloured papers forming a distinctive feature of the design.