THE SECOND WORLD WAR
-12-Volume Heron Reprint Variant Edition-
1974
Third English Illustrated "Heron" Edition
Heron-Cassell & Co. [London]
Biblio: (Cohen A240.19) (Woods A123m)
16mo (4500+pages, illustrated with maps and plans)
Hardcover [Blue leatherette]
Item Number: 207211
$550.00
Collector's Guide
The Second World War, also known as Winston Churchill’s War Memoirs, won Churchill the Nobel Prize for literature in 1953. Published in six volumes that appeared over six years, the books each came out first in the U.S. under the following titles: THE GATHERING STORM (Volume I/1948), THEIR FINEST HOUR (Volume II/1949), THE GRAND ALLIANCE (Volume III/1950), THE HINGE OF FATE (Volume IV/1950), CLOSING THE RING (Volume V/1951) and TRIUMPH AND TRAGEDY (Volume VI/1953).
The ensuing English editions, issued within months of the American, contained numerous corrections and even a few additional maps. The English edition is therefore considered more definitive, though today the American edition may be rarer. The set was simultaneously published by the Book-of-the-Month-Club in America, printed on the same presses as the first editions, and thus can easily be confused with them. An excellent one-volume abridgment was published in 1959; largely the work of Churchill’s research assistant, Denis Kelly, though Churchill did contribute an interesting epilogue covering the years 1945-1957.
Description
This is a variant binding of one of the more attractive reprint editions of Churchill’s war memoirs. Usually found in brown quarter-morocco leather, this variant is bound in blue leatherette with elaborate gold tooling including Churchill’s facsimile signature on each front cover. Printed in twelve volumes, rather than the original six, the text includes most of Churchill’s final revisions to this much-revised history and is more profusely illustrated than virtually any other edition. Each volume has decorative endpapers and a ribbon marker.
The set is in very good condition, seemingly nibt, save for an elaborate bookplate on each pastedown and chips to the spine head of Volume X and the front cover edge of Volume XI.