I have here for sale original WORLD WAR ONE magazines, entitled FRAGMENTS FROM FRANCE by Captain Bruce Bairnsfather.  Published in 1915 by "The Bystander", London. They have been bound up in two books. The first volume contains Vols I-IV and the second one contains Vols V-VIII.  This is a bind up of Bairnsfather's humorous cartoons from the front in World War I, each cartoon having a funny caption underneath.  

In 1914, he joined the Royal Warwickshire Regiment as a second lieutenant and served with a machine gun unit in France until 1915, when he was hospitalised with shellshock and hearing damage sustained during the Second Battle of Ypres. Posted to the 34th Division headquarters on Salisbury Plain, he developed his humorous series for the Bystander about life in the trenches, featuring "Old Bill", a curmudgeonly soldier with trademark walrus moustache and balaclava. The best remembered of these shows Bill with another trooper in a muddy shell hole with shells whizzing all around. The other trooper is grumbling and Bill advises:  

"Well, If you knows of a better 'ole, go to it."

Many of his cartoons from this period were collected in Fragments From France (1914) and the autobiographical Bullets & Billets (1916).

Despite the immense popularity with the troops and massive sales increase for the Bystander, initially there were objections to the "vulgar caricature". Nevertheless, their success in raising morale led to Bairnsfather's promotion and receipt of a War Office appointment to draw similar cartoons for other Allies forces.

Bound slightly differently from each other.  

Vol I has dark brown hardboards with black title lettering and a colour cartoon to the front board and black lettering to the spine.  Spine is faded.  Green linen endpapers with a library bookplate to the front.  Binding is quite loose and pulling at the front between the Foreword and page 3.  Also some pulling and splits near the back, with a few detached pages in between. Condition: fair/good 40 + 44 + 42 + 36 pages.  

Vol II has tan boards with a green spine and gilt lettering.  Same library label to the front endpaper.  Pages firm and clean.  32 +32 +32 +32 pages.  Both have small purple library stamps here and there also.  30 x 21 cm both.

We have over 2000 items in our Ebay shop on a range of subjects, so please feel free to have a browse and see if anything else takes your fancy. 

Postage will be by Air Mail outside of UK.  If you buy more than one item then the postage cost falls for the second and further items as I will put them into one parcel - so you save money. We wrap and post the parcels on Monday and Tuesday - therefore if you pay before midday on Tuesday we will get it in the postal sacks on Tuesday night, and if it is after that time then it will go into the postal service on the following Monday.