THE RIVER WAR
-Nelson “Shilling Library”Abridged Edition in the Rare Dust Jacket-
1915
”Nelson Shilling Library” Edition
Thomas Nelson & Sons [London]
Biblio: (Cohen A2.3) (Woods A2c)
16mo (457 pages, 16 monochrome maps, photo frontis, publisher’s catalogue at rear)
Hardcover (with Dust Jacket) [Light Blue cloth]
Item Number: 206384
$4,500.00
Collector's Guide
The River War was Winston Churchill’s second book, a brilliant history of British involvement in the Sudan and an account of the fierce campaign for its reconquest that Churchill himself participated in and, in many significant ways, disapproved of. Originally published in two large, lavish and, today, extremely rare volumes, THE RIVER WAR was abridged by Churchill himself for a 1902 one-volume edition. All subsequent editions have been versions of Churchill’s abridgement.
Description
This is a singular copy of the first so-called “Cheap Edition” in the extravagantly rare original dust jacket, which has lost approximately one-inch at the spine head and bears a vintage Canadian price sticker (”45c”) affixed to the spine, but is otherwise in spectacular condition. The book is too; just about mint, bright and fresh inside and out.
A small and fragile clothbound volume that was produced as a mass market paperback-equivalent of the World War I era, these Nelson Shilling Library volumes were considered quite disposable in their day. To find one preserved as-new, in its original dust jacket, is quite simply a phenomenon.