MY AFRICAN JOURNEY
-First English "Cheap" Illustrated Softcover Edition-
1909
First English "Cheap" Illustrated Edition
Hodder & Stoughton [London]
Biblio: (Cohen A27.8) (Woods A12b)
8vo (92 pages, plus adverts at both ends)
Softcover [Printed Paper wraps]
Item Number: 14247
$750.00
Collector's Guide
My African Journey is Winston Churchill’s travelogue account of his whirlwind tour of Britain’s East-Africa territories as Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies; his first official government office. The book features eloquent and perceptive observations about Africa, and much big-game hunting, with young Churchill as guide. The first English edition is particularly coveted for its handsome cover woodcut of the author posed beside a trophy rhinoceros. The more plainly-bound American edition, which utilized English first edition sheets, has no woodcut on its brownish-red buckram cover, yet it is the rarer volume.
Description
This is the extremely rare and fragile early English illustrated softcover edition. Produced in the style of a vintage “pulp” (a kind of Victorian-age comic book), it was a new setting of the text (in two columns) printed on cheap paper that browned quickly, bound in slicked paper wraps with a full-color cover illustration of Churchill, in pith helmet and rifle, standing by his bagged white rhinoceros.
There is a triangular 1/2-inch of loss at the lower front corner of the cover and a few preliminary pages. The spine is cracked, with losses at the ends, but the text is still legible. The contents are well browned and somewhat dampstained.
Still, the scarcest edition of this work.