This Item Has Been Sold
THE STORY OF THE MALAKAND FIELD FORCE
-First Edition of Churchill's First Book-
1898
First English Edition (Binding Variant) [1 of 2,000 copies]
Longmans, Green, & Co. Ltd. [London ]
Biblio: (Cohen A1.1.a) (Woods A1a)
8vo (352 pages, 6 maps, illustrations, tissue-guarded frontis portrait. With 32-page rear catalogue dated 12/97.)
Hardcover [Apple-green cloth]
Item Number: 10979
Collector's Guide
The Story of the Malakand Field Force was Winston Churchill’s first book, a chronicle of true-life military adventures drawn from newspaper dispatches filed by the then-22-year-old correspondent while serving on India’s Afghanistan-bordering Northwest Frontier under Major-General Sir Bindon Blood. Wrenching to read how little has changed in this region since Churchill’s time. The First Edition is easily distinguished by its apple-green cloth binding but Malakand is prized by collectors in almost any edition.
Description
This is a very good copy of the First English edition in the scarce mottled-green cloth binding variant that Cohen suggests may only have been employed for the second state. The rear publisher’s catalogue, however is dated 12/97, and there are no errata slips.
The cloth color is quite fresh and bright, though there is a faint line of discoloration across the front board. There are two small indentations to the edges of the rear board. There is a front hinge break at the half-title and some very faint scattered foxing to the prelims, but the book remains tight and square, with no misfolded maps. A single leaf comprising pages 151-154 has separated from the binding. All in all, though, a very handsome example of Churchill’s infamously fragile first book.
Laid-in is a loose additional leaf that appears to be a publisher’s proof or high-grade copy of the half-title and title pages, signed hastily: “Winston S. Churchill” across the half-title.