A History of the English-Speaking Peoples
London: Cassell and Company, Ltd., 1956. First edition, first printing. Hardcover. This is a full, four-volume British first edition, first printing set of Churchill's sweeping history and last great work. This first edition is regarded as one of the most beautiful productions of Churchill's works, with tall red volumes and striking, illustrated dust jackets. Churchill seems to have taken an active and detailed interest in the aesthetics of the publication. He told his doctor: "it is not necessary to break the back of the book to keep it open. I made them take away a quarter of an inch from the outer margins of the two pages and then add the half-inch so gained to the inner margin." He was clearly satisfied with the result, remarking with pardonable exuberance "It opens like an angel's wings." (Gilbert, Volume VIII, p.1184)
Unfortunately, as beautiful as the first editions are, they proved somewhat fragile. The dust jackets commonly suffer significant fading, wear, soiling, and spotting, and the books typically bear spotting and fading of the red-stained top edges. This set is quite respectable, featuring very good volumes in very good dust jackets. The red cloth bindings are square, bright, and tight with only light shelf wear to extremities, mild blistering along the Volume II front joint, and a horizontal wrinkle between the author’s first and last names at the head of the Volume IV spine. Both of these defects appear to be consequent to original binding rather than caused by time or wear. The contents of all four volumes remain bright. We find no previous ownership marks. The red topstain retains uniform, dark pink hue across all four volumes. Spotting appears primarily confined to the page edges and endpapers.
Shelf presentation is quite good, with all four dust jackets featuring bright, unfaded spines. Moreover, the jackets are complete apart from neatly price-clipped lower front flaps. We note only a few mild instances of soiling and trivial wear to a few extremities. All four jackets are fitted with clear, removable, archival covers.
Churchill's four volume epic, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, was published between 1956 and 1958. The work traces a great historical arc from Roman Britain through the end of the Nineteenth Century, ending with the death of Queen Victoria. Perhaps not coincidentally, this is the very year that saw Churchill conclude his first North American lecture tour, take his first seat in Parliament, and begin to make history himself. The work itself was two decades in the making. The Churchillian conceptions that underpinned it were lifelong. The cultural commonality and vitality of English-speaking peoples animated Churchill throughout his life, from his Victorian youth in an ascendant British Empire to his twilight in the midst of the American century.
Churchill began A History of the English-Speaking Peoples in the 1930s, completing a draft of "about half a million words" which was set aside when Churchill returned to the Admiralty and to war in September 1939. The work was fittingly interrupted by an unprecedented alliance among the English-speaking peoples during the Second World War - an alliance Churchill personally did much to cultivate, cement, and sustain. The interruption continued as Churchill bent his literary efforts to his six-volume history, The Second World War, and then his remaining political energies to his second and final premiership from 1951-1955.
Reference: Cohen A267.1(I-IV).a, Woods/ICS A138(aa), Langworth p.315. Item #007661
Price: $575.00