THE SECOND WORLD WAR
-Taiwanese Pirated Edition in Dust Jackets-
1968
Taiwanese Pirated Edition Set
Cassell and Co. [London]
Biblio: (Cohen A240.18b) (Woods A123ba)
16mo (Maps, diagrams and tables throughout)
Hardcover in Dust Jackets [Black cloth]
Item Number: 214374
$500.00
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 odd pirated set was photo-reproduced from the original Cassell edition, without any mention of the Taiwanese publisher, printer or publication date (another pirated edition does exist with all of those notices). The page sizes are reduced, the bindings are not consistently of the same dimension and the dust jackets are trimmed short of the actual book sizes.
All dust jackets here are shelfworn and quite age-darkened and faded on the spines but intact and unclipped. The contents are fine. All volumes have First Edition publication pages. There are dated ink gift insciptions [“From Margaret, 1948, 1952 and 1953,” respectively] on the half-titles of Volumes I, IV and V. Volume VI first free endpaper bears a tiny ink-stamp: “GRIFFITH’S BOOKSTORE, GEELONG.”
An interesting set, with all text and maps from the original edition.