The All-Australia Memorial (Victorian Edition). A Historical Record of National Effort during the Great War. Australia's Roll of Honour, 1914-1916. History, Heroes and Helpers ... Foreword by Senator the Hon. George Foster Pearce ... Introductory Narrative by E. Ashmead-Bartlett ...
Melbourne, British-Australasian Publishing Service, 1917 [first edition, first issue].
Quarto, 1-8, [4] (comprising a dedication poem, tipped-in portrait of the King, tipped-in portrait of Governor-General Sir Ronald Ferguson, and portrait of the Governor of Victoria, Sir Arthur Lyulph Stanley), 9-228, 24 ("Anzac Honoured Dead'), 72 ('Australia's Fighting Families'), 154 'Australian Imperial Force 1914-1915 Regimental Register ...'), [155]-158 (index), [2] (errata, verso blank) pages with 'over 1,000 Double-tone Illustrations' plus a large folding frontispiece (comprising 2 panoramas of Mena Camp, Egypt) and 30 plates tipped in or mounted on stiff card (2 large folding panoramas, a folding map, 6 folding plates, and 20 single-page plates including 8 plates each featuring 4 group portraits).
Original full black morocco lettered in gilt on the spine, with the Rising Sun emblem in gilt on the front cover; all edges gilt; leather a little marked, lightly sunned on the spine, and rubbed at the extremities; slight marginal discolouration to the pages adjacent to the card mounts; tears to a few of the folding plates expertly sealed; slight loss to silverfish to the lading margin of one leaf; minimal signs of use and age; overall an excellent copy, with the contents in a far superior state of preservation than often encountered with this work.
Mounted within the decorative border printed on the recto of the stiff card to which the frontispiece is attached, is an official ACMF card (a bifolium, with a blue ribbon tied in a bow through the front panel) with a small printed portrait photograph and printed service details of Private A.V. Porter, 7th Battalion. The signature 'J.B. Valli' is written in pencil on the front flyleaf. Below it in ballpoint pen is a 1977 gift inscription, which concludes with 'This was your Uncle Joe Valli's who died in 1st World War. See page 22' (where the name J.J. Valli, Golden Square, is recorded in the list of 'Anzac Honoured Dead'). 1626 Joseph James Valli, 7th Battalion, died of wounds on 24 August 1916, while a prisoner of war in Germany. We presume J.B. Valli to be his father or another relative (but not his mother, Sarah). We have examined dozens of copies of this title, and scarcely one resembles another; it is clearly a headache for bibliographers and cataloguers alike, but it is an underrated resource deserving of a bibliography of its own. The only edition we have identified that lists Manderson as editor-in-chief (indeed, that mentions him at all) is this 'Victorian Edition' of 1917, the true first edition. It also includes a two-page preface by him (pages 9 and 10), which is much more informative than the shorter, unsigned versions in later editions. The first edition contains Part II, 'Anzac Honoured Dead. A Lexicographical Roll of Victorian Soldiers who Died on Service During the Period August, 1914 December, 1916' ([ii], 24 pages), and Part IV, 'Regimental Register. Comprising the Principal Victorian Units of the Australian "Imperial and Naval and Military Expeditionary Forces ..."' (154 pages). These sections do not appear in later editions, something foreshadowed in Manderson's preface: 'After the Evacuation of Gallipoli (December, 1915), the reorganisation and fusion of units caused many of them to lose their former State individuality, creating insuperable problems of compilation'.
Item #129984
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