The Story of the Malakand Field Force: An Episode of Frontier War, a scarce binding variant with intriguing provenance
London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1901. Second edition, second printing. Hardcover. This second and final printing of the Silver Library edition of Churchill's first book is notable for being a scarce binding variant and for intriguing provenance.
The Silver Library edition was the first to incorporate the author's corrections in the text, making this an important and highly collectable edition. Unfortunately, the maroon boards proved highly susceptible to fading and wear, the paper easily browned and became brittle, and the binding often cracked. Here is the second and final printing of the Silver Library edition. Of only 1,000 copies of this printing, just 337 were recorded as sold, so they are scarce. This particular copy is scarcer still. Bibliographer Ronald Cohen (Vol. I, A1.3.c, p.22) and Richard Langworth (p.22) note a binding variant, bound in a smooth, medium red cloth distinctly different from the textured maroon cloth common to the Silver Library edition and white wove, unwatermarked endpapers. This variant is slightly smaller than the standard Silver Library binding as well, with slightly trimmed text block, and the spine print and decoration in black instead of gilt.
Condition is very good. The binding remains tight with only minor shelf wear to extremities and a slight forward lean. The spine shows moderate toning, as does a strip of the front cover fore edge. The contents are particularly bright and well preserved for a Silver Library edition, with only modest age-toning to the page edges and a hint of spotting almost entirely confined to the page edges. All maps are present and pristine, as is the frontispiece and tissue guard. This copy also features interesting and relevant provenance. The front free endpaper recto features an inked owner name above “Rawal Pindi” (a city in the Punjab province of what is now Pakistan) above the date “January 1926”. An additional inked inscription directly below (ostensibly in the same ink and hand and signed with the same owner initials) appears to read “In memory of week end at Nowshera spent going over the Malakand”. The only other previous ownership mark we find is the illustrated bookplate of a “Harry P. Tate” affixed to the facing front pastedown.
The Story of the Malakand Field Force recounts Churchill’s experiences while attached to Sir Bindon Blood's punitive expedition on the Northwest Frontier of India in 1897. This book was written and published while Churchill was a young cavalry officer still serving in India. He had successfully applied his pen as a war correspondent - indeed the book is based on his dispatches to the Daily Telegraph and the Pioneer Mail – but this was his first book-length work. Churchill was motivated by a combination of pique and ambition. He was vexed that his Daily Telegraph columns were to be published unsigned. On 25 October 1897 Churchill wrote to his mother: "...I had written them with the design... of bringing my personality before the electorate." Two weeks later, his resolve to write a book firming, Churchill again wrote to his mother: "...It is a great undertaking but if carried out will yield substantial results in every way, financially, politically, and even, though do I care a damn, militarily." Having invested his ambition in his first book, he clearly labored over it: "I have discovered a great power of application which I did not think I possessed. For two months I have worked not less than five hours a day."
Churchill sent the finished manuscript to his mother on the last day of 1897. It was published on 14 March of 1898. Publication was arranged by Churchill's uncle while the author was still in India, resulting in numerous spelling and detail errors. Churchill was incensed by the errors and acted with haste to address them. In part because of the errors in the first edition which so vexed Churchill, the publisher issued this second, Silver Library edition less than a year after the first in January 1899.
Reference: Cohen A1.3.c, Woods/ICS A1(ba.2), Langworth p.22. Item #006409
Price: $750.00