Printer’s Error

Bates responds to a review (attached) of his 1942 book In the Heart of the Country in which the book's title is described as 'rather silly' and the suggestion is made that 'it would surely have been better had the "in" been dropped'.

Bates agrees and explains that 'by one of those mistakes explicable only by the stress under which publishers and printers are now operating' the initial word was added, but that in a second printing, the title would appear correctly. No evidence is found of a later printing with the shorter title, although when reprinted in Bates's 1949 book The Country Heart, a publisher's statement mistakenly refers to the volume without the initial 'In'.

In The Field (23 May, 1942, p. 556, attached)