Description

CHURCHILL’S OWN COPY: HIS BRILLIANT HISTORY OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR,
FIRST EDITIONS, SIGNED BY HIM IN VOLUME V

CHURCHILL, Winston. The Second World War: The Gathering Storm; Their Finest Hour; The Grand Alliance; The Hinge of Fate; Closing the Ring; Triumph and Tragedy. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, (1948-1953). Six volumes. Octavo, original red cloth, original dust jackets.

True first editions, preceding the English editions, of Churchill’s masterwork. Volume V was Churchill’s own copy and is signed by him on the half title.

The six volumes of Churchill’s masterpiece were published separately between 1948 and 1953, each preceding the British first editions by some months; Churchill received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953. “A great history, of monumental quality? extraordinary in its sweep and comprehensiveness, balance and literary effect; extraordinary in the singularity of its point of view; extraordinary as the labor of a man, already old, who still had ahead of him a career large enough to crown most other statesmen’s lives; extraordinary as a contribution to the memorabilia of the English-speaking peoples” (John Keegan). With the Second World War, Churchill “pulled himself back from humiliating defeat in 1945, using all his skills as a writer and politician to make his fortune, secure his reputation, and win a second term in Downing Street” (Reynolds, xxiii). Cohen A240.1. Woods A123a. Langworth, 258-61. Previous owner’s lengthy pencil note of provenance on the front free endpaper of Volume V: “This book was from the personal library of Sir Winston S. Churchill. It was given to me by the lady who was his nurse during the last two years of his life, Nurse Thomson, S.R.N. This is one of the books Sir Winston asked her to fetch off the shelf when he needed a reference date or a situation that took place towards the end of the war. Jerry Granat, November, 1984.” Laid in is a photograph of Nurse Thomson with Helen and Jerry Granat.

Books fine. Dust jackets all near-fine to fine.