The World Crisis: The Eastern Front.
London: Thornton Butterworth Limited, 1931. First edition, first printing. Hardcover. This is the British first edition, first printing, of the sixth and final volume of Winston Churchill's history of The First World War, this copy noteworthy for exceptional condition and for retaining substantial portions of the extravagantly rare dust jacket. The Eastern Front is both essential to filling a full set of British first editions and scarce, owing to the fact that there were substantially fewer first printings of this sixth volume than of the preceding five.
A quarter of a century before the Second World War endowed him with lasting fame, Winston Churchill played a uniquely critical, controversial, and varied role in the “War to end all wars”. Then, being Churchill, he wrote about it. The World Crisis was published in six volumes between 1923 and 1931, with the first four volumes spanning the war years 1911-1918 and the fifth dealing with the postwar years 1918-1928 (The Aftermath). In proposing this sixth and final book to his publisher, Churchill wrote: "In the previous volumes of the World Crisis I have described only in a few pages the course of events in the Eastern theatre. They have merely been the background of our main drama of the war. But now I think I might write a volume called 'The Eastern Front', which would be separate from but supplementary to our five volume history."
Though the U.S. first edition of The World Crisis preceded the British, many consider the British edition aesthetically superior to the U.S., with its larger volumes and shoulder notes summarizing the subject of each page. British first edition dust jackets are not only extremely scarce, but notoriously brittle, particularly those for the 1916-1918 volumes and for this sixth and final volume, The Eastern Front. Individual jacketed volumes are rarely seen or offered outside of full, six-volume sets.
This British first edition, first printing is a near fine plus copy in a partial dust jacket. The blue cloth binding is square, clean, tight, and notably bright, with vivid spine gilt and perfectly preserved color. We note small bumps to the lower corners, minor wrinkling at spine ends, and very slight blistering of the cloth at the upper edges. The contents are crisp and bright with no previous ownership marks. All illustrations and maps are intact, including the color folding map at page 368. Trivial spotting is confined to the pastedowns and page edges. The jacket is in pieces, with splits and losses at hinges and flap folds, but nonetheless retaining the substantial majority of both the front and rear panels and the jacket flaps. The jacket retains roughly a third of its original dust jacket spine, which is laid over a photocopy of an original spine, all protected beneath a clear, removable, archival cover.
In October 1911, aged 36, Winston Churchill was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty. He entered the post with the brief to change war strategy and ensure the readiness of the world’s most powerful navy. He did both. Nonetheless, when Churchill advocated successfully for a naval campaign in the Dardanelles that ultimately proved disastrous, Churchill was scapegoated and forced to resign, leaving the Admiralty in May 1915. Years later, Churchill’s wife, Clementine, recalled to Churchill’s official biographer “I thought he would never get over the Dardanelles; I thought he would die of grief.” (Gilbert, Vol. III, p.473)
By November 1915, Churchill resigned even his nominal Cabinet posts to spend the rest of his political exile as a lieutenant colonel leading a battalion in the trenches at the Front. Before war's end, Churchill was exonerated by the Dardanelles Commission and rejoined the Government, foreshadowing the political isolation and restoration he would experience two decades later leading up to the Second World War. Nonetheless, the stigma of the Dardanelles lingered. Hence Churchill had more than just literary and financial compulsion to write his history.
References: Cohen A69.2(V).a, Woods/ICS A31(aa), Langworth p.103. Item #008273
Price: $1,600.00