My Early Life.
London: Thornton Butterworth Limited, 1931. First edition, fifth printing. Hardcover. This is the first edition, fifth printing of Churchill's extremely popular autobiography in the very rare dust jacket, which is apparently unique to this printing. This is the only example of this dust jacket we have offered.
Originally published in October 1930, My Early Life covers the years from his birth in 1874 to his first few years in Parliament. It sold very well at the time and has seen a great many editions since, many of them collectible in their own right, but of course a premium attaches to first editions. All six printings of the first edition feature a distinctive, vivid plum-colored binding, but the scarce and coveted dust jackets vary significantly. The first four printings occurred between October and December of 1930. The first printing dust jacket was printed in a vivid plum color. A second, third, or fourth printing dust jacket is vanishingly rare, very likely owing to the fact that they were all identical to the first printing and any surviving examples have all been transferred to first printing books; jacketed first printings are extravagantly rare and can command five figure sums.
This fifth printing of September 1931 (nine months after the first four printings, but nine years before the sixth and final printing) has a dust jacket in the same style as the first printing, but printed instead in navy blue on white paper. The spine, front face, and front flap of this fifth printing dust jacket have the exact same style and content as the first printing. The rear face advertises copies of The World Crisis just like the first printing jacket, but replaces earlier volume titles with The Eastern Front and the first Abridged and Revised edition, since these two titles were also published in 1931. The rear flap offers a list of “Autobiographies & Biographies” just like the first printing, but with three of the thirteen offered titles differing, as does the order of presentation.
The sixth and final printing of the first edition did not occur until 1940 and bears an entirely different dust jacket. Despite a quarter century of research, Churchill’s bibliographer Ronald Cohen never examined a fifth printing copy and Richard Langworth (Connoisseur’s Guide) refers only in passing (at p.133) to this fifth printing dust jacket. In short, it is quite rare.
This jacketed first edition, fifth printing is very good overall. The plum cloth binding, which proved so susceptible to sunning, is remarkably clean and vividly bright as only jacketed copies can remain. The binding remains tight. The only exterior flaws are slight signs of moisture staining to the lower edges, readily apparent only on the lower rear cover. The contents are free of previous ownership marks and show differential toning to the endpapers matching the dust jacket flaps. Spotting, endemic to the edition, is intermittent throughout, heavier to the first and final leaves and the page edges. The fifth printing dust jacket is highly complete, though worn, soiled, and stained. Minor losses are primarily confined to the top edge, to a maximum depth of .5 inch at the upper rear corner and .25 inch elsewhere along the top edge. The chief flaw of the dust jacket is moisture staining, evident along the bottom edge of the rear panel and spine, along the lower hinges, and along the rear flap fold. Ironically, at the lower edge and lower hinges this water staining transferred just a bit of the plum color dye from the binding to the dust jacket, imparting just a bit of the plum hue of the first printing dust jacket to this white fifth printing dust jacket. We also note a vertical crease to the rear face near the center and some overall spotting and soiling to the spine. Despite these flaws, a highly complete and exceptionally rare example of this dust jacket, which is protected beneath a clear, removable, archival cover.
Reference: Cohen A91.1.g, Woods/ICS A37(ab.5), Langworth p.133. Item #008128
Price: $3,000.00