THE STORY OF THE MALAKAND FIELD FORCE
-First Printing of the "Silver Library" Edition-
1899
"Silver Library" Edition (First Printing) [1 of 1,500 copies]
Longmans, Green, & Co. Ltd. [London]
Biblio: (Cohen A1.3.a) (Woods A1bb.1)
8vo (340 pages, tissue guarded frontis photo, illustrated with 6 maps, including 2 foldout in color.)
Hardcover [Dark Red cloth]
Item Number: 207893
$650.00
Collector's Guide
The Story of the Malakand Field Force was Winston Churchill’s first book, a chronicle of true-life military adventures drawn from newspaper dispatches filed by the then-22-year-old correspondent while serving on India’s Afghanistan-bordering Northwest Frontier under Major-General Sir Bindon Blood. Wrenching to read how little has changed in this region since Churchill’s time. The First Edition is easily distinguished by its apple-green cloth binding but Malakand is prized by collectors in almost any edition.
Description
A very good copy of the First Printing of the “Silver Library” Edition. The cloth and gilt are bright but modestly shelfworn with a very faint circular cup shadow on the front board and gentle sun-fading to the spine. The binding is strong and nearly square. There is a vintage former-owner name in ink on the Silver Library swan logo-imprinted front endpaper, and light foxing to the prelims, as well as light tanning to some pages edges throughout. The contents are otherwise fine.
Responding to numerous proofing errors in the First Edition of MALAKAND, Winston Churchill quickly prepared a new revised edition that restored the correct text as he’d originally intended it. Issued January 1899 in the publisher Longmans’ low-priced “Silver Library” series, this Second Edition constituted the book’s definitive rendering.