1915: The Spell of Flanders
Author/Editor: Edward Neville Vose
An outline of the history, legends and art of Belgium’s famous northern provinces, being the story of a twentieth century pilgrimage in a sixteenth century land just before the outbreak of the great war.
This first edition was published by the Page Co., in Boston, 1918.The cover is what caught our eye has it has a gilt-stamped, colorful tableaux. The original cost was $2.50 and this book was one in a series that focused on Europe. According to the preface, this book is the record of a vacation tour in the beautiful Flemish towns of Northern Belgium being in May and ending in July. The assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg at Sarajevo took place while the tour group was in Ghent and so this book profiles an era of civility and calm, prior to the devasations brought on by the Great War.
The book was reviewed in the New York Times on July 4, 1915, and reference was made to the fact that this “modest” volume which started out as simply a travelogue, also serves to record art and architecture destroyed by the war.
