"BOTH THE OLD NATIONS AND THE NEW NATIONS WERE JUST BEGINNING TO SIT UP AFTER THEIR FOUR-YEAR DEBAUCH OF WARFARE…": SCARCE FIRST EDITION OF ROBERTS' EUROPE'S MORNING AFTER, 1921

ROBERTS, Kenneth L. Europe's Morning After. New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1921. Octavo, original pictorial green cloth, original dust jacket. $2500.

First edition of this collection of newspaper essays about Europe in the immediate aftermath of World War I.

Written in 1919 and 1920, not long after the end of the First World War, Europe's Morning After is a journalistic travelogue about Europe in those early post-war days. While Roberts happily shares stories that reflect familiar cultural stereotypes, he also notes the internal tensions in Europe, the inter-country resentments, and the potential for a war that would erupt not even two decades later. "Roberts retains a note of humorous Americanism even while describing the direful plight in which the peoples of Poland, Hungary and Italy now find themselves. It is well that he does this. The vividness of his descriptive passages loses nothing by it" (Review of Reviews). "As impressions of a time that is gone they are vivid, informing and sympathetic though perhaps touched with extravagance" (Booklist). "A valuable and entertaining book" (New York Times). The essays in this book were previously published in the Saturday Evening Post. First printing, with code "B-V" on copyright page.

Book with a bit of foxing (mainly marginal) to interior, mild toning to spine. Dust jacket about fine. A near-fine copy.