Frontiers and Wars, a previously unknown variant.
London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1962. First edition, first printing. Hardcover. This is both one of the best copies of this edition we have offered and a previously unknown binding variant. Published in 1962, Frontiers and Wars is a single-volume abridgement of Churchill's first four war correspondent books - The Story of the Malakand Field Force, The River War, London to Ladysmith, and Ian Hamilton's March - covering his early career as an itinerant cavalry officer and war correspondent.
This copy is not only first edition, first printing, but also first state (denoted by a pagination error on p.42). However, this copy also has the head and foot bands previously attributed by Cohen (Bibliography, Vol. I, p.1001) only to the second printing. Moreover, this copy is bound in a slightly darker, denser, more uniformly shaded gray cloth than typical first printings. Finally, this copy came to us with a yellow band, clearly meant to wrap around the outside of the dust jacket, which reads (in two lines): "Previously 50/- NOW offered at 15/-“.
In addition to its bibliographic significance, this copy is compellingly well-preserved. This handsome edition generally proved fragile, with the gray-blue binding easily sunned and the lovely illustrated white dust jacket quite prone to soiling and tears. This copy is better than near fine. The binding is square, clean, tight, and beautifully bright with only trivial shelf wear to the bottom edges. The contents are immaculately crisp with no spotting, no previous ownership marks, and no age-toning. The red topstain remains improbably and uniformly bright. The dust jacket is a near fine example, unclipped and entirely complete. We note only trivial wear to a few extremities, two short closed tears at the spine head, and slight age-toning. The publisher’s yellow wrap-around band is fully intact. Both dust jacket and yellow band are protected beneath a clear, removable, archival cover.
Of Churchill’s first four books, the publisher states, "they have now been edited into this single volume, and while they have necessarily been abridged, they show in full measure the splendid march of the narratives and the force of the author's style." The title of the work is derived from Churchill's compelling narrative in the first Chapter of The Story of the Malakand Field Force: "The tale that I have to tell is one of frontier war..." Who performed the abridgment is not known. Though the book was published in Churchill's lifetime, it contains no new material, and Churchill was not involved in the preparation. Nonetheless, Richard Langworth rightly calls this book "the ideal introduction to Churchill the Victorian war historian." Langworth's appraisal accords with that of the publisher: "Throughout this volume there is that combination of sharp, personally observed detail with broad historical scope which is the author's hallmark. Reading it one feels with vivid clarity what it was like to be young and adventurous in those days. It is the portrait of a vanished age, as well as an account of some of Sir Winston Churchill's most exciting years told with his own incomparable vigour and zest."
Reference: Cohen A274.1.a; Woods/ICS A142/1(a.1); Langworth p.340. Item #008984
Price: $250.00