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MY EARLY LIFE: A Roving Commission

-Signed First English Edition Presentation Copy Inscribed to Churchill’s Daughter, Diana-

1930

First English Edition (First State/2nd Binding)

By: Winston S. Churchill

Thornton Butterworth Ltd. [London]

Biblio: (Cohen A91.1.b) (Woods A37a.1)

8vo (392 pages, with photo frontispiece, maps, plans, one folding map, 16 tipped-in illustrations)

Hardcover (without Dust Jacket) [Rough pink cloth]

Item Number: 14567

Collector's Guide

My Early Life is the only volume of personal memoirs that Churchill ever wrote. It is, arguably, his most entertaining book and an excellent entry point into his writing; a vivacious memoir of youth and wayward school boyhood. Published in the U.S. under the title A Roving Commission, the book has been endlessly re-issued in a variety of editions. True first editions, however, remain quite rare.

Description

Signed, dated and inscribed on the front free endpaper: “Diana from Papa Oct. 25, 1930,” five days after publication.

DIANA CHURCHILL (SANDYS) was Winston and Clementine Churchill’s eldest daughter, born July 11, 1909. She married twice, the second time on September 16, 1935 to the Conservative politician, Duncan Sandys, with whom she had three children. Diana Churchill died October 20, 1963.

This is a good copy of the less common First State/Second Binding (per Cohen) of the First English edition in rough pink cloth, with the variant five-line title block on the cover. The cloth is worn, the spine chipped and faded, the contents less than perfect but entirely intact. The book is preserved in a stunning, purpose-built, quarter-burgundy leather clamshell solander.