This Item Has Been Sold
STEP BY STEP
-Signed First English Edition Presentation Copy Inscribed Joseph Medill Patterson-
1939
First English Edition
Thornton Butterworth Ltd. [London]
Biblio: (Cohen A111.1.a) (Woods A45a)
8vo (365 pages, 2 maps, one folding, at rear)
Hardcover (with Dust Jacket) [Green cloth]
Item Number: 13820
Collector's Guide
Step by Step is a chilling anthology of Churchill’s prescient newspaper pieces about the rising Nazi threat, written for the Evening Standard and Daily Telegraph, commencing in 1936 with Hitler’s reoccupation of the Rhineland, through the final months before the declaration of war in 1939.
Description
This very good copy of the First English Edition in the rare dust jacket is inscribed, dated and signed in ink on the front free endpaper: “To Joseph Medill Patterson, from Winston S. Churchill, July 1939,” one month following publication and two months before Churchill’s return as First Lord of the Admiralty.
JOSEPH MEDILL PATTERSON (1879-1946) was a reknowned journalist and newspaper publisher, the grandson and namesake of Joseph Medill, founder of The Chicago Tribune. He served as editor of the Tribune from 1910 to 1925, before founding The New York Daily News in 1919. His cousin, Col. Robert R. McCormick, to whom Patterson turned over editorship of the Tribune after moving to New York, maintained a notably warm longstanding friendship with Winston Churchill, having met him during World War I.
This is a very good copy overall. The dust jacket is intact and unclipped but moderately darkened with age, as per usual, particularly at the spine, where there is fractional edge-chipping at the tail. There are further faint discolorations to the face, which has a very light crease through the title block. The green cloth boards are square, the gilt is bright, the corners are lightly bumped. The spine has significantly darkened and the head exhibits wear, with loss of less than one-half inch. The contents are fine, clean and unfoxed.
A marvelous association copy.