[7th Light Horse Regiment]. RICHARDSON, Lieutenant-Colonel John Dalyell

The History of the 7th Light Horse Regiment AIF. [The 7th Light Horse Regiment, 1914-1919 (cover title)]

Sydney, 'Printed and Published by Eric N. Birks, late O.C. No. 1 Sect. 5th A.M.G. Coy, Proprietor, Radcliffe Press', [1923].

Quarto, [x], 122 pages plus 35 plates (on 24 pages of plates) and 3 maps (1 double-page).

Quarter cloth and papered boards (with the regimental colours printed on the front cover); covers soiled and a little worn at the extremities; endpapers (especially the free endpapers) unevenly discoloured; top margin throughout slightly water-cockled, with a light rust-coloured stain to portion of the top margin of the pages (inoffensive in all but a handful of instances), and to about a dozen pages of text facing plates; notwithstanding, this is still a decent copy.

The introduction is by Lieutenant-General Sir Harry Chauvel. 'Subscription Edition limited to 300 copies of which this is No. 105' is printed on the half-title; needless to say, this accounts for it being perennially a fiendishly rare regimental history. The author was the last wartime Commanding Officer of the regiment; he was awarded the DSO at Gaza in late 1917. His preface is dated 1 November 1923, which puts a lower limit on the publication date. The National Library of Australia has copy number 282, inscribed in ink inside front cover 'C.A.W. Holt, "Hawthorn", Strathfield Avenue, Strathfield. 1st February 1924'. The catalogue record adds that this is 'presumably Claude Alfred Wallace Holt who served with 7th Light Horse Regiment and was wounded at the battle of Romani'.

We have handled a near-fine copy of this work, signed by the author (and it was presumably he who amended 'dictated' to 'dedicated' at the end of line 4 of the Dedication page). Loosely inserted in that copy was a circular letter on the letterhead of Radcliffe Press, the publisher of the book. For the record, we quote it in full: 'Apologies are tendered for the unavoidable delay in posting this work. As explained in the first circular it has not been a commercial venture for profit but a subscription issue at a price estimated as being within the reach of all and considerably less than the actual cost. That being the position there was no opportunity for speeding up production by increasing expenditure and each delay was due to a desire to obtain authentic information.

In short the delays have been beyond the control of both Editor and publisher and we can only hope that now the book is actually in post you will be pleased with the effort and agree that it has been worth while'.

Dornbusch 400; Fielding and O'Neill, page 232; Trigellis-Smith 278.

Item #140479

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