THE SECOND WORLD WAR
-Second English Edition Set-
Second English Edition Set
Cassell and Co. [London]
Biblio: (Cohen A240.4[I-.d, II.b, III.a, IV.b, V.a & VI.b]) (Woods A123ba)
16mo (Maps, diagrams and tables throughout)
Hardcover without Dust Jackets [Black cloth]
Item Number: 214354
$850.00
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 very good Second English edition set, without dust jackets.
Winston Churchill was famously disappointed to discover that the English First Edition of Volume I had been printed by Cassell in a 10-point Bembo typeface, rather than the larger 12-point that Churchill had originally approved. This reduction enabled Cassell to print an additional 15,000 copies but it led to snide remarks from “many of my friends,” according to Churchill, “that they would be happy to read” Volume I “as soon as they could find a magnifying glass.” The Second Edition, as a result, published the following year, in 1949, was entirely reset in the larger 12-point type. “For this new issue,” Churchill wrote in his Note to the New Edition, the publishers have found it possible to reset the entire book in a larger type, a change which it is hoped will be found agreeable to all readers.”
Volumes II, IV and VI here are also Second Editions, all reprinted within their original years of publication. Volumes III and V did not have second editions printed until the 1960s. Thus, this is a complete set of rare original Second English Editions.
The cloth of all volumes is fresh, the bindings square, the spine type bright. The topstains are variably faded, with Volumes I and II unusually unfaded. The contents are fine and unfoxed, save for a dusting of faint foxing to the fore-edges of I and III. There is a former-owner name in green ink on the title page of Volume II. Else fine.
Rather unique.