Description

“CHURCHILL AT HIS DAZZLING BEST”: CHURCHILL’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY, PRESENTATION COPY INSCRIBED BY HIM TO PRIME MINISTER RAMSAY MACDONALD A WEEK PRIOR TO PUBLICATION

CHURCHILL, Winston. My Early Life: A Roving Commission. London: Thornton Butterworth, (1930). Octavo, original purple cloth, uncut and partially unopened, original dust jacket. Housed in a custom full leather clamshell box.

First edition, first state, presentation copy, of Churchill’s acclaimed autobiography, inscribed on a front flyleaf to the former British Prime Minister a week before official publication: “To Ramsay Macdonald from Winston S. Churchill, Oct 14, 1930,” in exceedingly rare original dust jacket

My Early Life covers the first 25 years of Churchill’s life, to the beginning of his parliamentary career. Included are accounts of his childhood, his active service in Cuba, the North West Frontier and Omdurman and his exploits during the Boer War, detailing his famous escape from the Boers as a prisoner of war. In this autobiography “Churchill records his experiences in words which will live as long as any 20th-century author is read? My Early Life was one of the two Churchill works excerpted by the Nobel Library—for Sir Winston’s 1953 Nobel Prize in Literature was won not for his war memoirs but the totality of his work. This book presents Churchill at his dazzling best as chronicler and memoirist” (Langworth, 130). First state, with 11 titles listed on verso of half title. Cohen A91.1.a. Langworth, 131. Woods A37(a). Macdonald served two terms as British Prime Minister: in 1924 and from 1931-35, when he created the first British coalition government, which foundered on the shoals of an economic depression and the rearmament of Germany. Churchill, like many of his contemporaries, considered him ineffectual, noting in a 1931 House of Commons speech that Macdonald was “the greatest living master of falling without hurting himself.” With Macdonald’s bookplate. This copy comes from the Churchill collection of Malcolm S. Forbes Jr.

Interior fine, just a bit of soiling to rear panel of bright cloth. Notoriously scarce dust jacket shows some toning to spine and wear to extremities, with chipping to spine head and a small open tear to spine. A near-fine copy with outstanding provenance, most scarce in original dust jacket.