India, the scarce hardcover issue in the extravagantly rare dust jacket
London: Thornton Butterworth Limited, 1931. First edition, second and final printing. Hardcover. This is the first edition, second and final printing, which would be quite scarce as it is in the hardcover binding, but thus, in the original dust jacket, is rare to the point of potential singularity.
India is a collection of ten Churchill speeches as part of his campaign against the India Bill, over which he broke with his party’s leadership. Though his cause was lost, these speeches are considered to contain some of the finest examples of Churchill's rhetorical brilliance. The first edition is most commonly found in orange paper wraps. A much rarer first edition variant was issued in a hardcover (cased) binding of bright orange coarse cloth. A second printing of the first edition was issued in the same month as the first printing. According to Churchill bibliographer Ronald Cohen: "Few cased copies of the second printing are known."
Hardcovers were issued in a striking orange dust jacket that ranks among the rarest dust jackets in the Churchill canon. Jacketed hardcover first printings are coveted, expensive, and scarce; we know of fewer than a dozen surviving examples. Jacketed hardcover copies of the second and final printing were presumed, but entirely unknown until recent discovery of this copy in a private collection in Amsterdam – where it apparently resided since July 1931.
Mere presence of the dust jacket eclipses customary details of condition. Nonetheless, this dust jacket is a quite respectable, substantially complete example, with no repair or restoration. The thin, vivid orange paper suffers only shallow losses confined to the edges except for a small hole at the right center of the rear panel, adjacent to the spine. The faces and flaps retain bright, unfaded hue, modest toning limited to the flap fold edges and spine. We have newly fitted a clear, removable, archival cover.
The volume beneath has clearly spent life protected by this jacket, evidenced by the beautifully bright and clean binding and faint differential toning of the endpapers, corresponding to the dust jacket flaps. The binding is not only bright and clean, but square and tight with sharp corners and only trivial hints of shelf wear to extremities. The contents show modest, intermittent spotting, typical of the edition. The chief detraction is pencil margin notation and underlining. This we find at pages 5-11, 18-20, 22-24, 26, 30-31, 33-35, 37-42, 44-45, 49-50, 52-56, 58-61, 63-68, 70-72, 75-78, 80, 82-84, 87, 91-93, 96-100, 105-106, 111-116, 120-130, 133, and 135-140. The notation is all in pencil and plausibly erasable, but we chose not to alter what we found. Inked on the front free endpaper recto in three lines is the previous owner name, “Amsterdam” and “(July ’31).” Affixed to the lower rear pastedown is a tiny “The Times Book Club” sticker with a date of “6 31” (presumably an acquisition date of June 1931) ink-stamped directly facing the sticker on the facing final free endpaper verso.
The Times Book Club was designed to increase circulation for The Times newspaper by enticing subscribers with access to a wide selection of books that could be borrowed for free or bought at a significant discount. How this copy transitioned between June and July 1931 from The Times Book Club to a private collector in Amsterdam is unknown, but it doubtless owes its survival to the fact that it did.
Three factors explain why this is the only jacketed hardcover second printing anyone has reported. First, precious few hardcover second printing copies were issued. Second, jacketed hardcover first printings now command $five-figure sums. Third, the dust jacket is identical to that of the first printing. Hence, *if* any second printing hardcovers were previously found, there would have been considerable temptation to move the dust jacket to a first printing hardcover copy. We have resisted this temptation, presenting this potentially unique copy as it has remarkably survived, been found, and found us.
Reference: Cohen A92.1.d, Woods/ICS A38(a), Langworth p.150. Item #007679
Price: $7,000.00