Savrola, finely bound in full calf.
London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1900. First edition, first printing, first state. Full leather. This is a finely bound British first edition, first printing, first state of Winston S. Churchill’s only novel. This copy is a compellingly handsome example of the fine binder’s craft, in full, dark gray-green calf with lovely details. The binding features a hubbed spine with double gilt-ruled compartments and wavy gilt fillets on the spine bands. A black Morocco, gilt-printed title and author label is in the second compartment, a gilt centre tool in the other five compartments, and the publication date "1900" gilt-stamped between twin gilt rules at the spine heel. The covers feature double gilt fillet and dotted borders and a blind lace pattern inner border. The contents are bound with black and white silk head and tail bands and hand-marbled endpapers, with blind dentelle turn-ins. A black Morocco binder's ticket affixed to the lower left rear pastedown is gilt-stamped "PENNINE | BINDING | HALIFAX". The publisher's original cloth spine and front cover are bound in at the rear following the publisher's advertisements for The River War and The Story of the Malakand Field Force.
Condition of the binding is near fine, with only trivial superficial scuffs inevitable with a calf binding and the irregularities inherent to tanned animal skin. There are two states of the first printing, the second state distinguished by a title page cancellans with a blank verso. This copy confirms first state with an integral title page with the print history on the title page. The contents show intermittent spotting, endemic to this edition, the spotting heaviest to the text block edges, which also show some age toning.
A very young Churchill was exuberant about publication at the time. Even though Savrola was his third published book, it was actually the first book he undertook and the second he completed. His “Tale of the Revolution in Laurania” is a melodramatic story of political intrigue in a fictional Mediterranean state. Professor Patrick Powers (1943-2022), a singular authority on Savrola, asserted that Savrola gave “dramatic voice to Churchill’s mature philosophical reflections about his fundamental political and ethical principles at the very moment when he settled on them for the rest of his life.” (Powers, Finest Hour #74)
Churchill would later make deprecating comments about his novel and it is perhaps instructive that he never wrote another. In his 1930 autobiography he wrote, "I have consistently urged my friends to abstain from reading it [Savrola]." However, his mixed feelings about his only novel did not keep Churchill from writing a foreword to a new edition in 1956: "The preface to the first edition in 1900 submitted the book 'with considerable trepidation to the judgment or the clemency of the public.' The intervening fifty-five years have somewhat dulled though certainly not changed my sentiments on this point." Irrespective of Churchill's feelings about his book or the literary merit thereof, the novel certainly provides an interesting insight into the early political perspective and sentiment of the then very young Churchill.
Reference: Cohen A3.2.a, Woods/ICS A3(ba.1), Langworth p.41. Item #008925
Price: $1,400.00