Description

“THE DEBUT OF AN EXCITING NEW TALENT”: CHURCHILL’S MALAKAND FIELD FORCE, HIS FIRST BOOK, ASSOCIATION COPY, EXTREMELY RARE SIGNED BY HIM

CHURCHILL, Winston. The Story of the Malakand Field Force, An Episode of Frontier War. London: Longmans, Green, 1898. Octavo, original apple-green cloth. Housed in a custom full leather clamshell box.

First edition, first issue, association copy of Churchill’s first book, an account of his service with the Malakand Field Force in India, with frontispiece portrait of Sir Binden Blood and six maps, two of them folding and in color, the copy belonging to the expedition’s surgeon, signed by Churchill on the title page.

When in the summer of 1897 a “Swati revolt threatened the British garrison holding the Malakand Pass” along the Afghanistan border, “Churchill caught the next boat to India” where he covered the events of the campaign for the Daily Telegraph (Manchester, 250). The book “was hailed as a minor classic, the debut of an exciting new talent, and? a penetrating study of Raj policy. Churchill’s response to all this is curiously moving. He was ‘filled with pride and pleasure? I had never been praised before” (Manchester, 262). First issue, without errata slip and with 32-page publisher’s catalogue dated 12/97 bound at rear. Without virtually unobtainable dust jacket, described as “presumed to have existed, no examples have been found” (Woods). Cohen A1.1.a. Woods A1(a). Langworth, 11. Owner signature of James Henry Hugo dated in the year of publication, with annotations and errata written in his hand. Hugo was Surgeon-Lieutenant on this expedition, who “greatly distinguished himself in the siege of Malakand and with an expedition into Upper Swat in 1897-8, winning the D.S.O. and the Frontier medal with two clasps” (British Medical Journal, March 20, 1943).

Occasional scattered light foxing to interior; light rubbing to extremities, some soiling to original cloth. An extremely good copy with exceptional provenance. Copies of this volume are extremely scarce, and most rare signed.