This Item Has Been Sold
SAVROLA
-Signed Second Printing of the First English Edition-
1900
First English Edition (Second Printing) [1 of 1,000 copies]
Longmans, Green & Co. [London]
Biblio: (Cohen A3.2.c) (Woods A3ba)
8vo (345 pages)
Hardcover [Blue Green cloth]
Item Number: 200300
Collector's Guide
Savrola was Winston Churchill’s first and only novel; a statement of personal and political philosophy delivered as a work of dystopian fiction about dictatorship (with an astonishing relevance to our own dire present moment in time). U.S. publication preceded the British issue by roughly ten days, rendering the American first edition the true first.
Description
This well-worn copy of the Second Printing of the First English edition is signed and dated in ink: “Winston S. Churchill 1905” beneath Churchill’s printed name on the Prefatory Note page.
Signed copies of SAVROLA are virtually unheard of. According to Richard Langworth, writing in his Connoisseur’s Guide, “SAVROLA is one of the least inscribed titles in the entire canon.” No more than four examples have come to auction over the past 40 years. The legendary Mortlake catalogue contained a single signed copy of SAVROLA and it too was a Second Printing of the First English edition. That said, the signature here has significantly faded. It is genuine, however; an authentic Churchill signature of the period without question.
The book’s cloth boards are rubbed and bumped along the edges, but reasonably fresh on both faces and the gilt titles on the front face remain bright. The spine is badly frayed at the head and along both joints, the cloth is worn and the spine type quite faded. The front inner hinge is beginning to give. The contents are fine, clean and virtually unfoxed, save for the pastedowns and free endpapers. Overall, a flawed yet extraordinarily rare volume, here preserved in an elaborate, purpose-built burgundy quarter-leather cloth solander.