MARLBOROUGH: His Life and Times
-Signed Presentation First English Edition Set in Dust Jackets-
1933-1938
First English Edition Set
George G. Harrap & Co. [London]
Biblio: (Cohen A97.2[I-IV].a) (Woods A40aa)
8vo (2,500+ pages, illustrated with photogravures, facsimile letters, maps and plans.)
Hardcover in Dust Jackets [Plum cloth]
Item Number: 214177
To view price please create an account or login
Collector's Guide
Marlborough is Winston Churchill’s majestic biography of John Churchill, the first Duke of Marlborough; soldier, statesmen, hard-headed Churchillian ancestor. Initially published in England as a lush four-volume set and then as a somewhat less deluxe six-volume set in America, it was subsequently issued in an unabridged two-volume edition and a single-volume abridgment.
Description
This virtually mint First English edition set in dust jackets is inscribed and signed in Volume I: “To Bishop Welldon, from Winston S. Churchill – September 1933.”
BISHOP JAMES WELLDON was the headmaster of Harrow School from 1885-1898 and an acknowledged powerful influence on Winston Churchill’s early life. When the young Churchill nearly flunked the Harrow entrance examination (answering not a single question in the Latin section), Mr. Welldon nevertheless “drew the conclusion that I was worthy to pass into Harrow,” as Churchill later wrote in his memoir, MY EARLY LIFE. “It is very much to his credit. It showed he was a man capable of looking beneath surface of things: a man not dependant upon paper manifestations. I have always had the greatest regard for him.”
The books and jackets are in unusually fine condition. The very fade-prone cloth of this particular set is here uniquely bright and unfaded, particularly along the notoriously problematic spines. The jackets are unclipped, save for Volume I, which is widely price-clipped, suggesting it may be the Second Impression dust jacket that matches the first in every respect except for the words: “Second Impression” on the lower front flap edge, here clipped. The pastedown opposite the signature page of Volume I is discreetly ink-stamped: “Field and Lewis Library” with a ceremonial memorial bookplate: “In Memory of John Chapman-Walker – B.I. 1921-1925.”
The contents are otherwise fine.