Hardback, Jonathan Cape, first edition, 1932.
Book condition: lacks the dust wrapper, but a nice tight copy, with some spotting to the front fore-edge. The endpapers feature the map of the area around Georgeham drawn by HW.

The publisher's blurb to the first edition reads: 'In The Village Book Mr. Williamson's scheme of alternatively decribing incidents in the village and scenes of the lanes and fields, covered the seasons of Winter and Spring; in The Labouring Life he completes the village cycle by continuing through Summer and Autumn. As in the earlier book, the chapters come under the general headings of "Spirit of the Village" and "Air and Light of the Fields and Sea."

'The Labouring Life is more mature than The Village Book; its author's outlook has become catholic and more tolerant. The result is a work which, it is hoped, will not only complement and amplify The Village Book as a living transcription of village life to-day, but which will also make excellent entertainment. Mr. Williamson sees as sharply as before, but since he has left the village of Ham, his imaginative sympathy has become wider. "If I am rude to anyone in this village chronicle" says the author in one of the new chapters, "it is a self-judgment."'

(For a further consideration of the book and the background to the writing of it, see Anne Williamson's The Labouring Life.)