The Flight of the Heron — D. K. Broster, Heinemann (1927 cheaper edition)
1927 (first published 1925)
A 1927 cheaper-edition hardback of D. K. Broster's The Flight of the Heron, the first novel in her celebrated Jacobite trilogy, published by William Heinemann Ltd at 3/6. The imprint page records three earlier impressions since its first publication in October 1925. Ownership inscription 'Xmas 1927' on the front free endpaper. A sound, complete copy in good condition.
The Flight of the Heron is D. K. Broster's best-known novel and the opening volume of her Jacobite trilogy, set during the 1745 rising of Bonnie Prince Charlie. The book follows the intertwined fates of Ewen Cameron, a young Highland laird serving the Prince, and Major Keith Windham, an English officer in the opposing army, whose paths are mysteriously linked by a second-sighted Highlander's prophecy about the flight of a heron.
Your copy is a William Heinemann hardback with the imprint page stating: 'First published October 1925. New impressions November 1925, April 1926. Cheaper edition, 3/6 February 1927. New impression August 1927', and the title page dated 1927. This places it in the early 'cheaper edition' series that brought the novel to a wider audience at an affordable price. The front free endpaper bears an ink ownership inscription, 'Xmas 1927', dating the book almost exactly to the release of the cheap edition — likely a Christmas gift in that year.
The copyright page advertises other Broster titles then in print with Heinemann (Mr. Rowl, The Wounded Name, The Yellow Poppy, Sir Isumbras at the Ford). The book contains a full prologue, five parts and an epilogue across 411+ pages, with chapter headings including 'Through English Eyes', 'Flood-Tide', 'The Ebb', 'Your Debtor, Ewen Cameron' and 'The Heron's Flight is Ended'. The binding is structurally sound, all pages and prelims are present, and there are no detached leaves. The copy also sits alongside your copies of The Gleam in the North and The Wounded Name, forming a small but focused D. K. Broster cluster in the collection.
Significance
Broster's Jacobite novels helped define 20th-century popular images of the 1745 rising in much the same way that Walter Scott's Waverley had done a century earlier. They combine careful historical research with an emotionally intense exploration of loyalty, honour and cross-cultural friendship, and brought a more complex, less caricatured view of Highland Scotland into mainstream historical fiction. The 1927 cheaper edition is tangible evidence of the book's immediate and broad commercial success.